Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

What’s Wrong with the World
is dedicated to the defense of
what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of
the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the
Jihad and Liberalism...read more

How to lie with statistics, example umpteen [Updated]

Recently I received a phone call from my non-Christian (as far as I know) philosopher friend Neil Manson who, because he has an active and fair mind, had been exercised over what seemed to him the high FQ (Fishiness Quotient) of the statistical meme presently going around to the effect that "98% of Catholic women use birth control." Or something. Maybe "98% of Catholic women have used birth control." The former is obviously ludicrous, as it would seem to include elderly Catholic women, of whom it seems plausible that there are more than 2% among Catholics. Anyway, Neil wanted to know if I had read anything debunking the statistic.

Well, I had to admit that I hadn't. This is mostly because the relevance of the claim to the HHS's mandate is, to put it mildly, obscure. If a large percentage of Jainists are chowing down on hamburgers on the side, it hardly follows that an expressly Jainist charitable organization should be forced by the federal government to fund a plan that buys free hamburgers for its employees. If a bunch of Quakers turn out to have gun licenses, employees of an expressly Quaker organization are not therefore entitled to have their fees paid to a shooting range or their ammo. provided at no cost through an employer plan. There is this commonsense notion that organizations that are explicitly identified as religious are allowed to uphold the actual doctrinal and behavioral standards of their respective religious bodies. Whether the rank and file membership of that religious body follow those standards in daily life should be irrelevant.

Still, it has proven rather interesting to look into the statistical claim.

Here's how it works. The study is here. The relevant tables are Figure 3 on p. 6 and the second Supplementary Table on p. 8. The survey was limited to women between 15-44. Ah, well, that explains how we weren't including the elderly, but it also means that the silly "percent of all Catholic women" thing should be chucked out right from the beginning. More strikingly, as Neil pointed out to me after looking up the study, it excluded any women who were a) not sexually active, where that is defined as having had sexual intercourse in the past three months (there go all the nuns), b) postpartum, c) pregnant, or d) trying to get pregnant! In other words, the study was specifically designed (as the prose discussion on p. 8 makes explicit, in bold print) to include only women for whom a pregnancy would be unintended and who are "at risk" of becoming pregnant. Whether or not it included women who considered themselves neither trying nor not trying to get pregnant (there are some such women in the world) is unclear. It's also unclear whether it included women who have had their reproductive organs removed because of some medical problem. Presumably the study was intended to exclude women in both of these categories, as neither would count as a woman "at risk of an unintended pregnancy."

Now, consider what all of this means as far as the representativeness of the sample for Catholic women. Surely there are a fair number of Catholic women between 15-44 who are not "at risk of an unintended pregnancy" for various reasons. It is plausible that this number is higher among Catholics than among non-Catholics. For one thing, a faithful Catholic woman in this age category who is not married is supposed to be remaining celibate. Hence she won't fall into the "at-risk" category, and by the same token she won't have any use for the "services" that the Obama administration is mandating be provided. Similarly, married Catholic women are probably more likely not to be attempting to avoid pregnancy, even using Natural Family Planning, than non-Catholic women. One would think they are also more likely to be pregnant or postpartum. And so on and so forth. In short, the deliberate design of the study to cover only women who, at the time of the study, were having sexual intercourse while regarding a pregnancy as unintended would be likely to make it unrepresentative of Catholics and particularly unrepresentative of devout Catholics. Yet the study is now being cited to show the percentage of Catholic women generally who are not following the teaching of the Catholic Church in this area! What is wrong with this picture?

First, the Politifact discussion insists that the claim is only about women in this category who have ever used contraception. When I first heard that and hadn't looked at the study, I immediately thought of the fact that such a statistic would presumably include women who were not at the time of the study using contraception and had used it only once in the past. It was even pointed out to me that it would include adult converts whose use might easily have been prior to their becoming Catholic. However, that isn't correct, anyway. The study expressly was of current contraceptive use. That's, in a sense, "better" for the side that wants the numbers to be high.

However, second, that is swamped by the point made above about all the groups (likely to be more highly represented among Catholics, especially faithful Catholics, and not in need of contraceptive "services") excluded from the study--celibate women, postpartum women, women not trying to avoid pregnancy. And on this point, too, the Politifact evaluation is completely wrong. Politifact implies that only the supplementary table on p. 8 excluded these groups and that Figure 3 on p. 6 included them! But this is wrong. The table on p. 8 is simply supplementary to Figure 3, and both are taken from the same survey using the same restrictions! This is made explicit again and again in the study.

Politifact seems to think that including these excluded groups, which it wrongly thinks are included in Figure 3, increases the total number of "contracepting" Catholic women found, apparently by including women who have used contraception at some earlier time in their lives. This completely ignores the ways in which such exclusions are likely to bias the study away from devout Catholics.

Of course, we don't actually know what the overall effect of including the excluded groups would be, because they weren't included. No doubt Guttmacher would say that such groups should be excluded from their survey because they wanted their survey to be about "current contraceptive use." It is obvious that, for example, pregnant women aren't going to be using contraception. Well, okay, then. But a statistic based on a study that explicitly excluded those who have no use for contraception is obviously irrelevant to a question about the percentage of Catholic women who have a use for contraception!

If a researcher wanted to design a study that included the excluded groups and then examine probable later contraceptive use among women currently post-partum, pregnant, trying to get pregnant, etc., he could include those groups in the original study and interview those sub-groups further about their later intentions: If they get pregnant, after that baby is born, do they intend to try to avoid pregnancy while continuing to be sexually active? If so, what method do they intend to use? If they get married, do they intend to use contraception? And so forth. It would, of course, be possible to question the objectivity of such future projections on the part of the women, but it would allow a sample in such a study to be more representative of Catholic women, including devout Catholic women, while gathering information relevant to the claim, sure to be made, "Yeah, but they'll want contraception later on."

The statistics in the Guttmacher study appear to be okay for the purpose for which the study was originally intended. The intention of the study was to answer something like the following question: "Among women of various religious groups who are now sexually active but do not wish to become pregnant, what percentage use different methods of avoiding pregnancy?" But the purpose for which the statistic for Catholic women from the study is now being used is to argue, "A very high percentage of Catholic women (or, perhaps, Catholic women of child-bearing age) are currently not following the Catholic Church's teachings on sex and contraception and have a use for contraception forbidden by the Catholic Church."

For that purpose, these statistics are bogus.
Update 1: Upon reflection, I have realized clearly an additional major problem with the 98% statistic. It is including all the Catholic women who expressly told researchers that they used "no method" to avoid pregnancy. In the table, that is 11%. The 98% statistic is apparently derived by subtracting only the 2% who said that they used NFP from 100%. So women who said they used no method of contraception are apparently being included in a statistic about how many Catholic women use contraception. How's that for crazy? And that's in addition to the problems discussed already in the original post.

Update 2: P. 5 of the prose discussion asserts that, among married women, percentages of pregnant, postpartum, and trying-to-get-pregnant women do not vary by religious affiliation. No data is provided in this document to support that assertion. None of the graphs appear to bear on it.

Comments (142)

The 98% is actually an undercount, they just mis-named the category: Of the Catholic women who are currently sexually active and who have a concrete contraceptive mentality (defined as an intent to have sex and takes positive steps to make sure specific acts of sex are free of conceptive capacity), 100% of them use contraceptives. THAT'S 100%. Not some measly 98%.

Oh, wait, "women who have a concrete contraceptive mentality" isn't the group you want to talk about when citing statistics? Well, then the study is flawed, isn't it? Because that's what it measures.

Well, Tony, the treatment of NFP by the study is certainly a little strange. It's supposedly included as an option, but apparently the researchers asked the women some such question as, "What method of contraception did you use in your last act of sexual intercourse?" We don't actually have the questions, but the prose description of methodology suggests this as their way of determining what category to put the women into for their data gathering. Now, many women using NFP would find that a strange way to look at the matter. So it's probably no wonder they came up with such a small percentage who were using NFP. Perhaps some women using NFP actually went into the small "no method" category on the chart.

The obvious inability to distinguish between people who actively want a child to come of this act of sex and people who aren't actively desiring or NOT desiring that a child should come of this act of sex, leaving it entirely in God's hands without further intent, makes me doubt that the questions are well enough designed to tell us anything.

In fact, the more I think about that "no method" category, the odder it seems that it appears to be getting included in the statistic of contracepting women! If they aren't using any method, why are they counted as using contraception?! I should have said something about that in the main post. It's a decently hefty category, too--11%.

The long form of the statement is: "98% of sexually active Catholics have used contraceptives at some point in their lives." That reflects the truth in the pews. If the study is way off and the actual percentage is only 90%, the point doesn't change.

The short form is: In your sectarian bubble what you think is your business is none of your business. Your medieval theological delusions are irrelevant to most people's lives.

Christianity grew and once thrived on kindness and a reputation for kindness. The farther it removes itself from being kind the more political strength it gains at the expense of spiritual power. That is why the RCC is an empty shell of corruption and hypocrisy.

I do wonder, though, why the research arm of Planned Parenthood is regarded by anyone as having any credibility.

Up next, the National Barbershop Research Institute will issue a research study indicating that haircuts are of great benefit to society. And- as it turns out- most males between the ages of 15 and 50, who are not bald, who are not hippies, who do not cut their own hair or have their wives cut their own hair, patronize barber shops. Ninety-eight percent, in fact, although we suspect that the true number is much higher.

Strangely, perusing the NBRI, I do not see any studies on the necessity of government-funded barber shops, or the simple human justice of requiring employers to offer barber-shop services to employees. I hope the Guttmacher researchers will pick up the Barber folks' slack on this vital and pressing issue.

You are wise Lydia to view any Politifact analysis with skepticism. Unfortunately they have too often evolved into yet another source of spin. That being said, the political calculus that I assume is being used by the administration revolves around the two votes in Colorado and one in Mississippi on fetal personhood. What I believe these votes and the instant study demonstrate is that, regardless of stated belief and affiliation, folks will vote to preserve their options on matters that are significantly economic and personal.

Currently the RC hierarchy isn't on the highest moral ground anyway. I'm sure that I'm not the only person who recalls how many of those folks tolerated and even enabled the sexual abuse of minors every time they piously hold forth on this or that.

Anyway, whatever the quibbles one has, the study does demonstrate a certain popularity of contraception across a broad spectrum.

Another factor is general opinion on what is actually in the ACA is largely based on ignorance and misinformation. The danger for you all in this current brouhaha is that all most folks hear is "free contraception" and they form the thought, "whoohoo!" Couple that with the possibility that invoking "conscience" as a strategy to deny folks something they, at least, wish the option of having access thereby further discrediting the moral claims of the hierarchy, well, we might have a win win for my side.

Lydia, the Guttmacher PDF and this PDF from the CDC both use data from the NSFG, but they seem to have some different statistics. Page 7 of the CDC document shows about 38% of women not currently using contraceptives. If the 98% number from Guttmacher is indeed current use, can you explain the difference in these numbers?

Al, do the local grocery and convenience stores where you live lack a selection in contraceptive products? Because even here in the reactionary South any 12-year-old kid could probably lay hands on such products with the most remarkable absence of any force of denial.

As for the Catholic hierarchy, well -- I'm not a Catholic but I basically endorse what my very Catholic (especially when it comes to this very question) friend has to say here:

What your ideology blinds you to, Al, is something that the rest of us are well aware of: the bulk of the Roman Catholic bishops in America are basically Democratic politicians. If you take us to be proclaiming their moral stature you are just showing your ignorance of American Christianity.

Keith, thanks for the CDC link. I haven't had time to look through the CDC document in a lot of detail, but yes, it's quite clear if you look at both documents. The CDC says expressly that the statistic you cite (38% not contracepting) is also taken from ages 15-44 but includes the women expressly excluded from Figure 3 on p. 6 of the Guttmacher PDF--those who are "not at risk of an unintended pregnancy" because they are trying actively to get pregnant, are already pregnant, are post-partum, and the like. Figure 3 is _expressly stated_ in the Guttmacher report to be of current contraceptive use and to exclude those groups.

As my first update notes, the statistic even from the Guttmacher figure should be 87%, not 98%, because women who expressly said they were using _no method_ shouldn't be counted as contracepting.

I haven't yet looked in the CDC document to see what breakdowns they do by religion or if they do so. The 38% not actively trying to avoid pregnancy appears to be across religious groups.

"If you take us to be proclaiming their moral stature you are just showing your ignorance of American Christianity."

You all use them when it is convenient and denounce them when necessary and that is all that matters when looking at the politics of things which is what this is really all about. I know you all have lost the argument when things devolve into angles on the heads of pins quibbles. The facts seem to show that folks want certain options to be available and that they will tune out moral claims when they don't ring true and what is at stake are matters highly personal and economically significant.

"Let them buy condoms!" Folks have lost their heads over similar sentiments, just saying.

Something more interesting is likely going on anyway. Back in 2008 - 9 every public and private forecast was predicting a drop in GDP that turned out to be way off. In retrospect the over the top fear and anger that led to the Tea Party was a better indicator.

Obama's failure to understand and channel that anger into a reform of the financial system and the casting into outer darkness of those responsible for the mess was the crucial error of his first term. I have to wonder if the current re-invigoration of the culture wars isn't an indicator of an economic recovery that is stronger than we realize.

Obama's failure to understand and channel that anger into a reform of the financial system and the casting into outer darkness of those responsible for the mess was the crucial error of his first term.

Failure to understand that he should wage war on his own paymasters? Hmmm.

I have to wonder if the current re-invigoration of the culture wars isn't an indicator of an economic recovery that is stronger than we realize.

For once I agree with you, Al. Obama thinks he can ride anti-Catholic bigotry to victory. He might be right, especially when you realize that the GOP might nominate a man who launched a similar assault on conscience in Massachusetts.

"Failure to understand that he should wage war on his own paymasters?"

I believe you mean everyones paymasters. But yes, I do. Plutocratic heads on pikes (so to speak) could only boost small individual contributions. Plutocrats are mostly "at ones feet or at ones throat" types anyway.

do you really believe that this is about anything else at the levels of power?

I believe that at the level of political authority, as you said, Democratic politicians have re-invigorated the culture wars in order to consolidate power and gain re-election.

I believe that at the level of ecclesiastical authority Democratic politicians who want the President re-elected really wish he wouldn't be so mean; but more than that they wish the Church would just bail on the whole traditional sexuality thing so they could get on with project, along with secular Democrats, of bringing about the servitude of the nation.

Back on topic, going to the CDC report and looking under Appendix 2: definitions, I came across this which may explain some of the 11%.

Other nonusers—Women who reported that they were using no contraceptive methods for any reason in the month of interview and could not be otherwise classified were considered nonusers. Included are:
Women who never had (voluntary) intercourse since their first menses.
Women who have had intercourse, but not in the 3 months prior to interview.
Women who had intercourse at some time in the 3 months prior to interview but were not using a method in the month of interview.

I suspect that the first group mentioned was not included in their "at risk" category, because they obviously shouldn't be. The other two groups leave out so much information I'm not sure how they should be described. They could have used contraception previously, but it doesn't say if they did. There is also a strange emphasis on "the month of the interview" even though their time frame was three months. Very confusing.

Step2, if you look at the prose discussion in the Guttmacher report, you'll see that only the third of those categories could have been included in the 11% in Figure 3. Neither category 1 nor 2 could have been. Figure 3 is expressly including only "sexually active" women--that is, women who have had intercourse in the previous three months. The 11% also cannot include women who were definitely trying to get pregnant, as those were excluded as well.

Having done a PDF search for "religion" and "Catholic" in the CDC report and come up blank, I conclude that the CDC report can't really help the Guttmacher folks very much to establish specific claims about Catholic women's use of contraception. The CDC report doesn't appear (unless for some reason the search function was not working properly for that term, though it worked for other terms) to include religious data.

The CDC report shows that 97% of Hispanics have ever used contraception and according to Pew about a third of U.S. Catholics are Hispanic and 68% of Hispanics are Catholic. It seems to me that we have a fair proxy in the CDC numbers for Hispanics. If the Catholic population differed markedly in contraceptive practices from the population as a whole it would show up in the numbers for Hispanics and it doesn't seem to.

Oh, btw, those CDC "ever used contraception" numbers by race appear to include those who have used natural family planning (16.6% and 3.4% for different types of NFP for Hispanics). These appear to be counted in the CDC table "methods of contraception" and the 97% is for "any method." That table is on p. 19 of the CDC document. Asians appear to have the highest percentage who have ever used various forms of NFP/periodic abstinence. I have no idea why.

And I more I reflect on it the more I think it apt. Hispanics who are religious tend to be socially conservative and Hispanics who are religious and not Catholic are mostly evangelicals. Hispanics have larger families than other groups (Mormons excepted) but Hispanics also use contraceptives at rates close to the average.

If you look at the table (page 23) for current method NFP falls to well under 1% for both whites and Hispanics while pill use is slightly under the average and sterilization is significantly higher than the average.

If you have an actual objection to using Hispanics as a loose proxy for Catholics, let us know.

"If a bunch of Quakers turn out to have gun licenses, employees of an expressly Quaker organization are not therefore entitled to have their fees paid to a shooting range or their ammo. provided at no cost through an employer plan. There is this commonsense notion that organizations that are explicitly identified as religious are allowed to uphold the actual doctrinal and behavioral standards of their respective religious bodies. Whether the rank and file membership of that religious body follow those standards in daily life should be irrelevant."

Maybe not,

"They assert, in other words, that "prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]" includes requiring any individual to observe a generally applicable law that requires (or forbids) the performance of an act that his religious belief forbids (or requires). As a textual matter, we do not think the words must be given that meaning. It is no more necessary to regard the collection of a general tax, for example, as "prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]" by those citizens who believe support of organized government to be sinful than it is to regard the same tax as "abridging the freedom . . . of the press" of those publishing companies that must pay the tax as a condition of staying in business. It is a permissible reading of the text, in the one case as in the other, to say that, if prohibiting the exercise of religion (or burdening the activity of printing) is not the object of the tax, but merely the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision,"

"Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities."

""Laws," we said, are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. . . . Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself."

"Subsequent decisions have consistently held that the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes)."

"Aided by a history of three centuries as an identifiable religious sect and a long history as a successful and self-sufficient segment of American society, the Amish in this case have convincingly demonstrated the sincerity of their religious beliefs, the interrelationship of belief with their mode of life, the vital role that belief and daily conduct play in the continued survival of Old Order Amish communities and their religious organization, and the hazards presented by the State's enforcement of a statute generally valid as to others. Beyond this, they have carried the even more difficult burden of demonstrating the adequacy of their alternative mode of continuing informal vocational education in terms of precisely those overall interests that the State advances in support of its program of compulsory high school education. In light of this convincing [p236] showing, one that probably few other religious groups or sects could make, and weighing the minimal difference between what the State would require and what the Amish already accept, it was incumbent on the State to show with more particularity how its admittedly strong interest in compulsory education would be adversely affected by granting an exemption to the Amish."

Al: It's a federal "law" that we are talking about. RFRA kicks in. Game over.

In addition, isn't it odd that we would consider it "legal" for the executive branch to confiscate wealth without due process? The regulation, and its minstrel show follow-up, are simply decrees, issued by an executive. When, pray tell, did Congress vote on that "law"? I know, I know, regulatory agencies can be given power by Congress to "craft regulations." But I am challenging whether that is in fact consistent with a Constitution that requires a government of separated powers. For in the case of these HHS regulations, the legislator, the executive, and the judiciary are the same! What Obama did on Friday was the equivalent of "judicial review."

"In §1302(a): “…with respect to any health plan, coverage that
… provides for the essential health benefits defined by the Secretary….”
• In §1302(b)(1): “…the Secretary shall define the essential health
benefits….”
• In §1302(b)(2)(A): “The Secretary shall ensure that the scope of
the essential health benefits … is equal to the scope of benefits
provided under a typical employer plan, as determined by the
Secretary. To inform this determination, the Secretary of Labor
shall conduct a survey … and provide a report on such survey to
the Secretary.”
• In §1302(b)(2)(B): “In defining the essential health benefits … the Secretary shall submit a report to the appropriate committees
of Congress containing a certification from the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services….”
• In §1302(b)(3): “In defining the essential health benefits … the
Secretary shall provide notice and an opportunity for public comment.”

etc. it's in the law as is similar language in other laws.

"This is what the Founders would have called tyranny."

This is from the Ordinance of 1787.

"Sec. 5. The governor and judges, or a majority of them, shall adopt and publish in the district such laws of the original States, criminal and civil, as may be necessary and best suited to the circumstances of the district, and report them to Congress from time to time..."

"Al: It's a federal "law" that we are talking about. RFRA kicks in. Game over.

Maybe, maybe not. The RFRA occurred to me and that's why I included the reference to Wisconsin v. Yoder, which the RFRA restored as a controlling precedent. Sherbert v. Verner, also referenced in the RFRA, seems to add nothing this matter. I'm not saying that a conservative majority couldn't torture precedent into making RFRA "fit".

I like those haters of Catholicism who chime in. You don't have a horse in the race. And those of you so-called Catholics who think that it is some sort of medieval theology to believe that Catholics need to follow the laws and precepts of the Church should leave and increase the rolls of the dwindling episcopalian ranks. Just because 98% of the sexually active married and non married poorly catechized and thoroughly modernized catholic women use something that may cause the death of a human fetus doesn't mean that the theology is wrong. Repentance is an act of turning from our sin to the Lord. Repent of our sins then and turn to the Lord en-masse. If 98% are using contraception and are then going to communion, then there will be a lot of souls falling to hell like snowflakes.
And maybe now the Bishops will hopefully see what their democratic friends are all about and they can get in the business of being Catholic and not democrats. Start teaching Bishops. Quit using the lame excuse of excommunication as an automatic consequence (late sententiae), and publicly use the usurping of our religious freedoms as a teaching moment and excommunicate publicly and formally those Catholics who are in lock step with this administration and not with the Church.

Al, of course, being an ideologue himself, doesn't realize what is otherwise obvious: Only a crazed ideologue could think that supplying contraception to every woman in the country is so important a matter as to justify a law of “general applicability” overriding the religious objections of employers and insurers and requiring all of them to supply it. One could make a better case for the ludicrous proposition that vegetarian employers should be required to buy steak club memberships to make sure that all their employees get their requisite iron, B12, and protein. At least meat provides important nutrients.

That Obama's administration is trying seriously to impose this policy and that people like Al defend it is just more evidence that we are ruled not by reasonable men, not even by reasonable secular men, but by crazed ideologues.

Generally speaking- or more likely it's a universal constant- people who complain that sexless old white men in dresses have no business prohibiting any variety of sexual libertinism have never done any research on the question 'why can't Catholics use the pill like normal people?' beyond 'I think that's dumb, therefore they're evil and ignorant and fearful &c &c'.

But plenty of Catholics have obviously not absorbed the teaching of the Church on human sexuality either. If they had, it wouldn't be as easy for Planned Parenthood's 'independent' 'research' arm to gin up stats on contracepting Catholics; and it probably wouldn't require saintly courage from our bishops to defend the magisterial teaching were use of the pill less widespread in the pews.

Al, the Northwest Ordinance was passed by the Congress of the Confederacy, not the Congress under our present Constitution. Second, the powers given to the government officials in the Northwest were given to distinct branches, not administrative agencies separated from the people by several degrees. What the Confederacy Congress did was permit the Northwest territories to have governments, which is what New York would do if someone wanted to create new township or city. That's not the same as giving broad discretionary powers to a single person to craft laws that confiscate property without due process of law. If the HHS secretary deems that abortion and contraception are not only not necessary, but harmful, can she require all hospitals and clinics to not engage in these practices? The answer, of course, is "no," since the Supreme Court has declared these fundamental rights, even though they are not mentioned in the Constitution. On the other hand, religious liberty is mentioned in the Constitution and it too is a fundamental right. So, if the HHS secretary can't coerce hospitals to cease providing contraception and abortion, then she can't coerce hospitals to provide contraception and abortion, since procuring both procedures are a "right" and not an obligation.

This is real simple. If an individual can refuse to use contraception, sterilization and abortion--because the CHOICE is protected by the right of privacy--the same CHOICE found in the right of privacy should protect an individual or a collection of individuals from assisting in the dispensing of contraception, sterilization, and abortion. If you disagree, you've implicitly agreed to the regime of Buck v. Bell, to which I have no doubt we are heading.

a faithful Catholic woman in this age category who is not married is supposed to be remaining celibate.

"Celibate" means "not married." "Chaste" means "abiding by the sexual mores proper to one's state in life." "Continent," in this context, means "abstaining from sexual intercourse."

And there's no way Employment Division v. Smith gets applied in this context. The only way that decision is even remotely defensible is as a war-on-drugs idiosyncrasy. It will not be extended to cover this sort of nonsense. And even if it were, RFRA clearly applies and clearly is not expressly excepted from by the HCAA. The regulation (whatever the regulation is, Obama's most recent articulation certainly not having been promulgated in conformity with the Administrative Procedures Act) imposes a burden on a religious practice and is not the most narrowly tailored means possible.

the intention of the study

Guttmacher is a Planned Parenthood subsidiary. Let's all think real hard about what the intent of the study was.

I don't know what to say about Al's quotation of the Northwest Ordinance. That is so far afield of anything that could remotely be considered "the point" in any possible universe that I am, frankly, speechless and flabbergasted in the face of it. But then again, Al seems routinely to cite legal authority with all of the skill and aplomb of the feverish amateur, as his quotation (in the same post) of the rule-making authorizations from the HCAA make clear. But then again, given what T.A.'s actual point was, Al's response is a straw man of such dexterous mendacity that he may indeed be a professional.

On the other hand, religious liberty is mentioned in the Constitution and it too is a fundamental right.

Paying or refusing to pay for health insurance isn't mentioned in any religious text I know of. Twenty eight states currently require secular employers who provide insurance to pay for contraception, with varying and sometimes only nominal degrees of exemption by religiously affiliated employers. Maybe there was a huge outcry when all those state laws were passed, but I never heard a peep about it despite spending the last 7 years on blogs with lots of Catholic posters and commentators.

Anyway, here's the question I have for Lydia, taking this "violations of conscience" excuse to its logical conclusion. We all know that you've written passionately about being opposed to vital organ transplantation. If you were the owner of a business and were convinced this was absolutely wrong, wicked even, do you think you should have a right to force all your employees, very few if any who share your concerns, to be without insurance coverage if they need a vital organ transplant? Furthermore, since transplants are a costly procedure, do you think you should have a right to a special discount because of your refusal? What if you were a Christian Scientist, should you be exempted from providing any medical insurance, since it is merely material healing and not spiritual?

Heck, Step2, I think the entire regulatory concept of requiring employers to provide such-and-such insurance benefits is economic stupidity, dumb policy, and government overreach anyway, so _of course_ I think an employer should be able to tailor-make an insurance policy that excludes some particular benefit, if he can find an insurance company to go along with it.

And not provide health insurance? Heck, yeah. You shouldn't even have to claim a special religious exemption for that. Being a Christian Scientist just adds icing on the cake. Where is it evident by the natural light that employers are obligated to provide health insurance to their employees??? Good grief! In my lifetime, and probably yours as well, employer-provided health insurance has gone from being a real cool benefit used to attract employees to being an entitlement. Our country is entitlement-mad.

But perhaps to answer your question more directly, I repeat what I have said elsewhere: The whole reason that feminists have worked assiduously to get laws passed requiring coverage of contraception is because initially, and for ordinary, sensible reasons, that coverage wasn't considered "basic" or "medically necessary" but rather a lifestyle choice. The analogy made *by insurance companies* was to diet pills. This had nothing to do with religion. Coverage of, e.g., birth control pills, etc., were Cadillac benefits, which plenty of secular insurance companies and secular employers didn't include for actuarial and common sense reasons. The feminists pushed for forcing them to include these things on political grounds driven by an ideological agenda, not because it is some sort of basic health need. Because it obviously isn't. A fortiori, Cadillac benefits being urged for reasons of sexual ideology shouldn't be forced on employers that have conscientious objections.

By the way, the bishops have a document in which they address the "28 states" argument. I don't have time to look it up right now, but they do quite a good job of pointing out the various shelters for religious employers under those laws. But yes, for the record, I think those were bad laws as well.

I think it's pretty amazing, btw, the way liberals push through something they like at the state level and when they get barely over half of the states to do it, wham-o, they pass something sorta kinda similar, only more so, at the federal level and then talk like there is some obvious and natural right to force this upon everybody across the country on the grounds that, hey, 28 states have something rather similar.

It's such a poor argument. If this sort of thing is not such great policy at the state level, and the federal version is even more heavy-handed, how is the fact that it's been wangled through in 28 states supposed to make it a good idea to do federally, again? Or why again are we supposed to shut up about the federal law? Good grief.

Step2, maybe if Lydia were a business-owner free to provide or not provide health insurance, she could entice a lot of young go-getters to work for her, because they prefer a 20% salary premium to health benefits.

This liberal drive to enforce conformity on the national level and stamp out variety has always been a puzzle to me.

Have you ever noticed how an idea that was a brand spanking new concept just a coupla years ago quickly becomes an absolute norm? We all are supposed to suffer corporate amnesia about the fact that just a short time ago _nobody_ thought all employers were required to provide health insurance.

TA and Titus, TA made a statement that I took to mean that the Founders were unaware of and would have been opposed to the concept of legislative delegation. I went to the Northwest Ordinance as the Founders were alive and were aware of it and I have it handy. If you really want me to, i suppose I could find many examples of congressional delegation going back to the beginning but both of you really know your objections are bogus and that the various delegations in the health care law are well within the ability of the Congress, don't you?

"Al, the Northwest Ordinance was passed by the Congress of the Confederacy, not the Congress under our present Constitution."

So? Besides the Founders being alive and aware of the Ordinance as well as the notion of delegation, we have Article Six, Clause 1. of the Constitution. "All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation."

"When, pray tell, did Congress vote on that "law" was the question TA asked that suiggested that he was unaware that the Congress has the ability to broadly delegate. I was merely giving some examples of the sorts of things the Congress delegated in the act. The Secretary of HHS was delegated the task of determining various matters concerning coverage. Why is noting that a problem?

"Have you ever noticed how an idea that was a brand spanking new concept just a coupla years ago quickly becomes an absolute norm? We all are supposed to suffer corporate amnesia about the fact that just a short time ago _nobody_ thought all employers were required to provide health insurance."

I assume you meant "nobody thought all employers should be required". Some form of universal health provision was proposed by Teddy Roosevelt over 100 years ago. FDR and Truman wanted to do something and in 1974 President Nixon proposed this,

"--Employee Health Insurance, covering most Americans and offered at their place of employment, with the cost to be shared by the employer and employee on a basis which would prevent excessive burdens on either;"

Until they get sick. Back in 1986 I had surgery at UCLA. The other bed was occupied by a chap in his mid 20s, with a degree, a great job with ATT in Arizona, and leukemia. By that time he had had a bone marrow transplant. Things did not look good. Young people get sick and have accidents too. Paul, I thought you were a responsible sort of fellow, or were you one of the folks applauding Ron Paul at the "let them die" debate?

Do you all really hate the thought that more folks might get some health care that much?

I believe this analysis mis-interprets the Guttmacher report, which on page 4 states:

"Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women."

Note that in that bullet point, no reference is made to Figure 3. "Ever used contraception" is an entirely different question than the "currently using contraception" that is reported in Figure 3. This confusion explains the discrepancy between the 98% above and the 87% in Figure 3 that are using something other than NFP or no method. Read the CDC report -- the "ever used" question is on page 5, the "currently using" question is on page 7.

NB: I agree with the Catholic church that religious organizations should not be required to pay for medical services that are against their beliefs.

I'm not a statistician, so much of the jargon and numbers being thrown around are a little overwhelming.

Obviously, the amount of Catholics choosing to disregard sound theological teaching doesn't affect the truth inherent in the teaching itself. So, no amount of percentage could ever justify making the Church violate her conscience as a whole.

The greater point being missed, I think, is that whether 98% or 87% or 50% of Catholic women are contracepting, it's too many. The shepherds of the Church have done a pretty poor job of providing sound catechesis to her followers. What was sown is now being reaped. Entire generations of Catholics do not understand basic Catholic teachings, or have been formed (either consciously or sub-consciously) by secular ideologies. You see it on this board, you see it in your families, in your friends. So many Catholics have become experts at justifying their distorted personal theologies, but spend very little time actually reading and understanding the Church's theology. And heaven forbid you bring up the virtue of obedience to people.

I propose we spend less time arguing over minor percentage differences from one study to the next and really start figuring out ways to effectively evangelize to the millions of lost Catholics. As much as I appreciate your efforts to find the errors in the "98%" debate, I doubt you will change many hearts with your conclusions.

Scott, for clarity's sake: I'm not Catholic. I am a Christian and an analytic philosopher. I don't like cant and lies. This administration and their fellow travelers traffic heavily in cant and lies. Heavily exaggerated statistics are part of that program. As a purely secular friend said to me, in almost these exact words, "One reason that this is important is because the underlying message is that the Catholic views are not simply wrong but _crazy_, that they do not describe an achievable way of life." I think that was shrewd. Whether one agrees or not with the Roman Catholic Church's position re. contraception, the current liberal meme is that it is _insane_, that no one _could_ live according to those principles. The idea is to demonize social conservatives generally, with the Catholic Church serving as a kind of proxy for "everything sexual and social liberals hate." Both for that reason and for the sake of accuracy, debunking exaggerated statistics as I was attempting to do in the main post is relevant.

Al, Congress, of course, can delegate. No one denies that. But what happened in the Northwest Ordinance was not the delegation of Congressional powers, but the formation of a government with its own powers, just as the nation does so when new states enter the union.

The HHS, or any other administrative agency, should not be given so much discretion to function in effect as if it were another Congress, executive branch, and judiciary. Think about it. Last Friday we had the Secretary of HHS claim to change a law, which she can apparently change tomorrow and change again the next week, with all its punitive aspects still intact. And yet, these changes, let alone the original law, did not result from the deliberations within a democratically elected legislative body charged with crafting laws. No, these came from a single person, who, as I have already, may capriciously exempt some and not others.

If you cannot see the tyranny of this arrangement, then I cannot help you.

The entire issue is carefully engineered to divide and isolate social conservatives. In order to win re-election, President Obama, whose record is abysmal, needs to paint his opponent as too scary to risk. Better a known quantity in a miserable time than a whack job, you know. He had hoped that turning contraception into a campaign issue would accomplish that.

Fortunately, a large number of Americans understand that the issue is not contraception but rather religious liberty. It is likely to explode in his face. If the current discussion continues through the spring and summer, the Republican candidate should win handily and with impressive coattails.

As I see it TA, the Congress could have chosen to micromanage the territories though sub-committees, committees, and the whole body or it could delegate broad powers to an appointee as well as territorial legislatures or whatever. That seems to me to congressional delegation which is what I took to be at issue. If all we have is a disagreement over the propriety of this or that delegation, well, that is another matter.

There are always limits to powers delegated and I'll assume that the president, not to mention the Congress, would not likely tolerate the sort of arbitrary and capricious behavior you fear.

My experience and understanding is that the back and forth currently going on is simply part of the process. It usually happens in matters that elude the attention of the media - the process involving rule making by the CFTC pursuant to Dodd-Frank and executives of MF Global comes to mind.

It's hard to see tyranny here as the process is open, within the scope of the law and the Secretary is accountable to the president as well as the Congress who is free to change the underlying law.

"...the Republican candidate should win handily and with impressive coattails."

Not according to the polls. Anyway this is all political although the calculus being employed by the parties isn't completely clear. I caught Joe Scarbourgh on MTP yesterday and his worry is that the Republicans and the bishops overplay their hand and lose the suburban women. I see that as likely. In addition the bishops may be playing a slightly different and longer game - this hurts Romney and helps Santorum.

If a bunch of Quakers turn out to have gun licenses, employees of an expressly Quaker organization are not therefore entitled to have their fees paid to a shooting range or their ammo. provided at no cost through an employer plan.

that's a weird example to pick for your point. quakers aren't opposed to guns, they are opposed to wars and violence against human beings. in fact, quakers have tried to object to having their tax dollars fund wars they don't approve of and keep losing in the courts. quakers are regularly forced to pay for stuff they are opposed to on relgious grounds. that's been true for hundreds of years.

Has anybody mentioned the problem that the so-called "statistics" are based on self-reported answers? It is well known among statisticians that it ranges from somewhat difficult to quite difficult to get good solid numbers on objective facts that are reported independently from the personal subjects, like birth and death and divorce. It is still more difficult to get good data on objective facts that are self-reported. (Some people "put down anything he damn well pleases", using the comment of an English judge, quoted by Josiah Stamp.) It is still more difficult to get good data on self-reported facts that require memory over dates one month and 3 months back. And, finally, it is extraordinarily difficult to get reliable data on self-reported conditions that may or may not be "facts" because there is some measure of ambiguity or vagueness in the meaning of the questions.

I guess the only thing we can say about that, Tony, is that the problems are probably equally likely to affect all religious groups. These data were supposedly based on personal interviews. I don't know if that makes them better or worse, though I would _guess_ that people would be less likely to give frivolous fake answers in response to questions by a live person.

"One reason that this is important is because the underlying message is that the Catholic views are not simply wrong but _crazy_, that they do not describe an achievable way of life."

This actually directly contradicts both my personal experience and the experience of hundreds of other families that I know personally, not to mention the thousands of families and individuals whom I have heard of trying to live the out the Church’s teaching on love, sex, and marriage.

Truth is, there are more than a few (and the number is growing) Catholics who are remaining faithful to the teachings of the Church, not simply out of blind obedience or ignorance, but because in living out those teachings they have experienced the true joys of following Christ in a very fulfilling and meaningful way. That way is not easy, and does indeed require self-sacrifice, but the words of Jesus himself suggest that true Christian perfection will be difficult, possible only by God’s grace, and something which only a few will attempt.

Sure, the percentage of faithful Catholics may be small, but what’s getting lost in many discussions surrounding the HHS mandate, I think, is the fact that the wisdom of the Church’s teaching on marriage, love, and sexuality isn’t simply found in a bunch of old, dusty books written by some senile old men: The beauty of that teaching has actually unfolded in the lived experience of more than a few Catholics in our current world.

Suffice it that the teachings of Catholic Church are not dull, impossible to follow, crippling, oppressive, outdated, ridiculous, medieval, etc, etc, for those who have actually studied them thoroughly and reaped physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual benefits from following them. It is certainly not true to say that these teachings are preposterous by nature and can’t be adhered to by normal people. The insult and audacity of the HHS mandate hasn’t only been felt by a couple of old Bishops.

(Not trying to be adversative, by the way, just lending my voice to the discussion...)

though I would _guess_ that people would be less likely to give frivolous fake answers in response to questions by a live person.

Possibly true, but then they would be subject instead to other adverse pressures: "what does the questioner WANT to hear", or "will I look silly saying yes instead of no?" The fact of the matter is that surveys like this are always subject to unknown factors tending toward false answers (possibly in multiple directions). When we cannot quantify the factors with knowledge, we like to make up assumptions about them, such as "the problems are equally likely to affect all religious groups", but we don't really know that, it is just an assumption that is reasonable given our feelings and subjective perspective on the culture. But it remains an assumption, and as a result the overall meaning of the data is peppered with a number of unknowns. If we assume that the inadvertently wrong answers are equally likely to be wrong in one direction as in another direction, and IF we assume that people are not malicious in answering with made-up answers, and IF we assume that they don't have a preference that makes them want to appear one way rather than another... Another way of describing this is "we don't know."

Tony, one area where I think what you are bringing up is relevant concerns the whole concept of an "unintended pregnancy" in the questioning that lies behind these charts. Especially since we don't have the actual questions asked, we have to guess. Presumably they excluded certain women by asking, "Have you been trying to get pregnant in the last three months?" or "Are you trying to get pregnant?" Now, we also don't have the order of the question. Suppose that they asked that question first and then, after receiving a, "No" answer, asked, "What method are you using to avoid pregnancy?" Now, under those circumstances, it's kind of a wonder that anyone answered, "No method" at all. We do have the 11%, but one can kind of imagine an incredulous look coming over the questioner's face (if the interview was face to face), a look that meant, "You're not trying to get pregnant, you're sexually active, yet you're using _no_ method to avoid pregnancy?"

We don't know if they asked women, "Are you at risk for an unintended pregnancy?" or if they just tried to rule out women not at risk for an unintended pregnancy by leaving out the named groups (e.g., those already pregnant, those trying to get pregnant, etc.).

So I have wondered a bit about how the structure and interpersonal aspects of the survey might have influenced interaction with, especially, women who were neither trying to get pregnant nor trying not to get pregnant. Is it that those just _are_ the 11% using "no method," or is that group not included, or what?

Do you all really hate the thought that more folks might get some health care that much?

Do you really hate the fact that some people would have to pay for their lifestyle choice of using artificial contraceptives out of their pocket instead of out of their indirect taxes (cause that's what putting in insurance is - talking about unmentioned externalities)?

IT AIN'T HEALTH CARE. A perfectly normal working set of ovaries and uterus being chemically altered into not working isn't HEALTH care.

Heck, Step2, I think the entire regulatory concept of requiring employers to provide such-and-such insurance benefits is economic stupidity, dumb policy, and government overreach anyway, so _of course_ I think an employer should be able to tailor-make an insurance policy that excludes some particular benefit, if he can find an insurance company to go along with it.
And not provide health insurance? Heck, yeah.

Heck, yeah! Moving to a system where individuals purchased their own health insurance would undermine the dubious notion that employers are somehow obligated to pay for their employees' health insurance and allow individuals to choose what coverage they want. And if people were directly footing the bill for their health insurance, they might be a bit more resistant to all of these absurd coverage mandates.

Guys, the based on the average family size in the United States, regardless of religion, either there's a whole lot of abstaining going on or there is a significant use of the various birth control methods. All the nit picking and tap dancing in the world can't change that.

Sage, read more carefully. I was responding to my friend Paul's irresponsible suggestion that young folks roll the dice regarding their health care. As long as you have brought it up, I'll assume that at least some of Lydia's employees will have spouses and offspring. Does Paul find their being uninsured problematic? For that matter Sage how about you? And guys, how is it that moral hazard goes out the window when it's your ideological/theological ox that's being gored?

"Al and I probably have approximately the same opinions about each other, I'm afraid, Sage."

While I find it interesting that some folks in comfortable and secure situations find it easy to lightly value the health and welfare of those not so richly blessed, outrage and eternal anger is the province of the right; I prefer to hope that one day the scales will fall.

"TANSTAAFL"

Actually there is, in a sense. Recall that in the long run we are all dead. Recall also that the Civil War cost about $7 billion and WWII about #280 billion, both sums being considerable for their times and equal to trillions today. However, that was then and the borrowing was in then dollars. In terms of what the GDP grew to in only a few decades the amounts became rounding errors; capitalism works that way.

As with Dr. Beckwith's comment south of here, TANSTAAFL is usually the result of a linear extrapolation while life is non-linear. We currently face three serious and somewhat intertwined problems - plutocratic hegemony, the health care cost curve, and climate change. As long as the sun shines, all we need is the political will and our problems are solvable.

"Do you really hate the fact that some people would have to pay for their lifestyle choice of using artificial contraceptives out of their pocket instead of out of their indirect taxes (cause that's what putting in insurance is - talking about unmentioned externalities)? "

It's apparently lost on Tony that "lifestyle choices" have serious health care implications and if one considers all the externalities with the matter in hand, his case vanishes, but yes, I find it totally obnoxious that the individual cost of contraceptives is a serious whole number multiple of what the costs are if they are covered under insurance.

Oh and you all might want to ponder this,

"What will McConnell have to say about the Muslim employer who – speaking purely hypothetically! – wants to impose de facto sharia law on Muslim and non-Muslim employees alike by unilaterally nullifying the application/enforcement/funding of various laws in creative – and religiously sincere! – fashion. Obama is going to oppose this sort of thing, because he hates religious freedom. Republicans, on the other hand …"

"Sticking just with the medical case, getting specific: suppose the Muslim owner of a large company that employs Muslims and non-Muslims (or even just Muslims) wants to be exempt from insuring medical stuff except in cases where male employees see male doctors and female employees see female doctors. The owner find it objectionable that ‘his money’ should pay for anything he finds religiously repugnant, and this is his take on sharia law. Would Republicans have any objection?"

Guys, the based on the average family size in the United States, regardless of religion, either there's a whole lot of abstaining going on or there is a significant use of the various birth control methods. All the nit picking and tap dancing in the world can't change that.

It's quite beside the point. Anyone in America who wants contraceptives can get them with ease. Aside from chemical medication, there is zero legal restriction on their purchase. Schools and hospitals and clinics often dispense them for free.

What this all comes down to is a species of unreason unfit for a 6-year-old: unless everyone in America is subsidizing sex without consequences (up to and including abortions) for those who desire it, then contraception is being denied to women.

Meanwhile, I see that even Ezra Klein's Wonkblog researchers have accepted Lydia's exposure of this fraudulent stat:

I am not going to argue about the mis-interpretation of the Guttmacher statistics, but is not the proof in the pudding so to speak? Two generations ago, Catholic women had significantly larger families than their non-Catholic counterparts -- my dad is one of 9 and that was maybe on the larger side but not unusual among his classmates at his Catholic school but the average family size at the time (1950s/1960s) was about 3 children/family if I remember correctly. I am one of four, pretty normal for the 1970s/1980s for Catholic families (my very conservative and devout 8 aunts and uncles all had four or fewer). But this was still slightly above the national average. Now, the average size of Catholic families is more or less the same as non-Catholics. Even among those regularly attending mass, sending their children to Catholic school, etc. in my moderately-conservative parish in my very conservative diocese, the outliers have 4 or 5, not 9 or 10.

Yes, I know, the many variations of NFP are supposed to be 99% effective, I've been fully informed. But the research shows that in practice it is more like 75%. And, anecdotally, I can attest to that with a younger sister, a 4th nephew, a child of my own that came much sooner than I would have preferred, a friend with child 4 AND 5, a neighbor with child 5... All well and good (though the fact that there is a failure rate does throw a little cold water on the repeated insistence that "devout" women will be so disproportionately open/trying, pregnant, or post partum)... but that should result in Catholic families being at least somewhat larger than non-Catholic counterparts unless you make the argument that the quiver-full, Duggar, fund/evangelical families pull that average up. I could be wrong but I don't think that there are enough of them to affect the non-Catholic average that much.

Aside for that issue, despite the black-and-white presentation, birth control is just not. Sometimes, preventing pregnancy is just the more responsible thing to do, like the woman with 6 kids and MS whose priest said that, yes, it was the moral choice at that point in her life. Or the woman with severe postpartum depression (which, by the way, significantly interferes with the ability to use NFP). Maybe this is just in-the-trenches rationalization, but my point is there is a lot of gray where you may draw the line to the right but someone else, equally informed and equally committed to the sanctity of life, might draw it to the left.

In addition, birth control is not simply contraceptive. The stats are hard to come by, but I've seen estimates that ~40% of hormonal birth control is prescribed for reasons other than contraception, so contraception is a side effect (welcomed or not), which is acceptable according to even a strict interpretation of the Church's position (for example, replace "birth control" with "cancer treatment"). Some may feel that some of these reasons are not "valid". For example, to reduce acne -- though having a few close friends with severe, painful, and socially debilitating acne in their teens, it seems perfectly valid to me, especially if there is NO contraception taking place. But some are very valid. I have a two friends with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and one also has severe endometriosis. Hormonal birth control is necessary for both to not only protect their fertility (suppresses the formation of cysts, which scar the ovaries, and the over-production of endometrial tissue, which also scars reproductive organs) but more broadly helps them maintain a hormonal balance that helps them maintain a healthy weight and hopefully avoid complications like diabetes. Then there is the hormone-replacement function they severe in cases were women have had to have ovaries removed pre-menopausal. In other words, othro tricyclen et. al, often serve the same function as thyroid medicine or insulin injections. In other words, it is an acceptable standard of care that should be covered by insurance.

Lydia, thanks for linking to our PolitiFact analysis. But your commenter Mark has it right when he says:

I believe this analysis mis-interprets the Guttmacher report, which on Page 4 states:

"Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women."

Note that in that bullet point, no reference is made to Figure 3. "Ever used contraception" is an entirely different question than the "currently using contraception" that is reported in Figure 3.

The study distinguishes between two different groups of women, those who are "sexually active," as displayed in Figure 3, and those who are merely "sexually experienced," described on Page 4.

When you say, "I immediately thought of the fact that such a statistic would presumably include women who were not at the time of the study using contraception and had used it only once in the past" — you were right.

Um, abra, if you are under the impression that anything in this post is about the morality of contraception, you are mistaken. I'm examining the support or lack thereof for a particular statistical claim.

Becky, I wonder if it is quite clear to you that a mere *assertion* in a *summary* (note that it does not appear that Rachel Jones actually did this research) of some data elsewhere does not amount to a serious statistical claim?

You are right that the Guttmacher report contains this assertion. So what? Where is their data? There is no data given in the Guttmacher report itself that supports this bare assertion!

Nor have I been able to find any detailed data available on-line that supports it, not even the CDC study linked elsewhere in this thread.

This isn't a matter of misinterpretation. It's a matter of an *unsupported claim* which you are treating as gospel because it was made in a Guttmacher report that provided no data to support it, the actual charts in which were about something else!

If Guttmacher wants this assertion taken seriously as truth, they need to give us detailed data, a discussion of who was included and excluded in the data sample, a discussion of methodology, and the like. Preferably, at this point, now that this controversy has arisen, they would publish not just their own summary but something closer to the *underlying data* from the NSFG, done by the *actual researchers*, on which any new chart they should choose to come out with is based.

I analyzed the charts actually provided in the Guttmacher document that contains the assertion. That those charts don't back up the assertion is Guttmacher's problem, not mine. They need to tell us where that number is coming from.

And any future number that excludes pregnant and trying-to-get-pregnant women is weird just to begin with. After all, if we're talking about ever-used, why exclude those groups anyway?

So if they're scrambling to tell us that that claim was based on some other data, data they haven't made available to the public for examination for bias and/or soundness, that's an admission right there.

It reminds me of a scene in _The Wind in the Willows_. Toad, trying to sell an old horse to a gypsy, says, "He's a thoroughbred, you know. Oh, not the parts you see. The parts you don't see."

Lydia, my point was, regardless of the accuracy of the statistic or whether it was interpreted correctly, it is quite obvious that even "devout" women are having fewer children. Barring fertility problems, that means they are periodically actively avoiding pregnancy. Given that NFP has a 25% in-practice failure rate* compared to 1-10% of most other commonly used methods, you would expect Catholic families to be larger than non-Catholic families, but they aren't. Ergo, it is reasonable to conclude that most Catholic couples use some form of artificial contraception at some point.

A secondary point was that regardless of the rate of usage, the morality of whether one uses it or not is not as cut-and-dry as many have argued, including some of your other commenters, who, I might note, you did not challenge about being off-topic. Given that, I think that it is either uninformed or unfair to argue that institutions should be allowed to exclude birth control from employer-provided insurance because the Church holds that its use is -- across the board -- immoral because it doesn't (I also don't think that it is constitutional, but that is another argument). That is why you were disputing the statistic in the first place (in short, I read your argument as: all of the people using that statistic are wrong about the faithful disagreeing with the bishops because "real" Catholics don't use contraception based on all the references to "devout" women).

In addition, I think that it is ridiculous to cry foul over the using a statistic that excluded nuns and the elderly. Though it has somewhat inaccurately been "Catholic women," it is fairly obvious that it is shorthand for "Catholic women who are sexually active and of childbearing age." If you do not fall into this category, whatever you are doing, it is **not contraception.** Though I hope sexually active widows and widowers practice safe sex -- condoms past the point of menopause are not technically contraception just like a chaste single person taking birth control to manage PCOS is not using contraception.

*Obviously, there is not a wave of abstinence occurring, as another commenter noted could be a possibility. That would be considered NFP, though with much longer periods of abstinence implied. If there were such a wave, the the failure rate of NFP would be much lower.

Actually, my main post *expressly questioned* the relevance of the statistic. Catholic institutions have a right to the religious freedom to uphold actual Catholic teaching regardless of behavior against those religious teachings of self-identified Catholics. How this can be "unfair" is truly beyond my comprehension. The idea that it is "unfair" for such organizations even to be allowed to exclude coverage for contraception and sterilization can only flow from an entitlement mindset--"I have a right to do what I want, and someone else has to lay out the dollars to make sure I don't suffer any unwanted consequences"--worthy of a bratty thirteen-year-old.

I have no patience whatsoever with the argument.

Nonetheless, I looked into the statistic because it seemed fishy, and, indeed, it appears that it _is_ fishy. This is interesting given that the meme is being used as if it *is* relevant to the public policy debate and somehow favorable to the administration's diktat.

It is unfair because it is **wrong**.
- It is unfair to those who are misinformed by its use.
- It is unfair to those who have done their homework and are in the right but are continually characterized as violating Church teachings.
- Most of all, it is unfair to those who would be deprived of morally acceptable standard medical treatment for some fairly common medical conditions.

But to your other point, Catholic institutions have the right to uphold Catholic teachings regardless of how Catholics behave (there are a lot more, like not bearing false witness and responsibility to protect the innocent and vulnerable, that the Church leadership could use some reminding of). That religious freedom does not include the right to unilaterally change civil law to compel believers and non-believers alike to comply with those teachings. You may disagree with provisions of the ACA, but is the law.

Al, how about you write more carefully. Next time you want to address your friend Paul and him alone, don't use words like "you all;" and the next time you merely want to ask whether he finds something "problematic," don't do it by suggesting he must have ill will toward other people.

Your implication that a person who does not think the monstrosity of Obamacare is worth increasing the number of insured by some relatively small percentage must therefore want people to be sick and insured, is barely worth taking the time to respond to. If your question is whether I think the existence of some minority of uninsured people justifies a remedy like Obamacare, much less that it justifies the mandate at issue in this discussion, my answer is no.

That religious freedom does not include the right to unilaterally change civil law to compel believers and non-believers alike to comply with those teachings. You may disagree with provisions of the ACA, but is the law.

Uhboy, looks like we've picked up a time-waster, possibly a troll. I'm going to do only a few more go-rounds with you. Let's try this:

--Civil disobedience isn't "changing civil law." It's disobeying it when it goes against your conscience. This is sometimes morally required. If you have a small amount of imagination you can probably think of a few examples even you would concur with. (Hint: Think Nazis.)

--Nobody is "compelling" anybody to do or not do anything. Not funding contraception is not compelling anybody to forgo it any more than not funding hamburgers compels somebody to be a vegetarian. That's just dumb.

--The high-toned, solemn, "It's the law" for something being *changed daily* by an unelected official who makes it up as she goes along is amusing. In a sickening kind of way. Who gives a tinker's damn whether Katie Sebelius has been given dictatorial powers and has decided, with her pal Barack Obama, to stick it to the Roman Catholic church? I mean, really, who cares? This makes this some kind of moral high ground that the Catholic Church organizations are *obligated* by the moral law to comply. No way. Even I as a Protestant can see that. What's next? Ordering Catholic hospitals to provide abortions and intoning, "It's the law"?

I think that it is ridiculous to cry foul over the using a statistic that excluded nuns and the elderly. Though it has somewhat inaccurately been "Catholic women," it is fairly obvious that it is shorthand for "Catholic women who are sexually active and of childbearing age." If you do not fall into this category, whatever you are doing, it is **not contraception.**

Yeah, you're darned tootin' it isn't contraception. So what's the deal about this statistic supposed to be again? Is it supposed to have something to do with the percentage of Catholic women who have a use for contraception? So if you gerrymander the statistic from the beginning deliberately to exclude women who have no use for contraception--especially when this is because they are following Catholic sexual teaching about chastity outside of marriage--you're just sort of massaging the statistics in the direction you wanted them to go. See? Sigh, no, you probably don't see. I also addressed this in the main post, by the way. Repeatedly.

No, because an employer should be free to determine what sort of health insurance coverage to offer just as an employer who worships Gaia might offer to subsidize the purchase of a car and stipulate that it must be a "green" vehicle even though the employee might prefer a Hummer.

Lydia, I agree with your general premise that politicians and bad journalists often misunderstand or misuse statistical data. I think one of the best examples is George W, Bush claiming that the "average" taxpayer would get an additional $1500 back from the IRS from his tax cuts. Of course, he was referring to the mean average, which is a horrible method of averaging out financial data for individual taxpayers.

I don't personally recall seeing any print media claiming that 98% of all Catholic women use contraception. Of course the only relevant population (with the exception of the few percent that might specifically take birth control pills due to hormonal issues) in the Guttmacher study was sexually active fertile women. And the study did state that of this population 98 percent had used or was currently using birth control. So, those pregnant, or lactating, or trying to get pregnant women were indeed part of that 98 percent -- they just weren't currently using birth control. I think the most germane statistic is that 70% of all single Catholic females, aged 15 to 44 are sexually active. No one has lied about these statistics, although one could fairly argue they should be used more precisely, instead relying on any implicit understanding that the data is derived from the sexually active population. However, when looking at the aggregate data, the big picture demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of fecund Catholic women are sexually active and that almost all of them have or will use "artificial" birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

I must also take issue with a second point of yours. Your analogy of Quakers and guns is inappropriate. There is no federal law mandating free ammunition for gun owners. There is one when it comes to health insurance and the inclusion of prescription birth control coverage. If you disagree with this law,so be it. But don't indulge in your own guilty pleasure of ignoring existing facts. By the way, if my memory serves me correctly, there was a time in the not too distant past when most health insurance programs did not cover pregnancy and childbirth. I believe it was the same federal legislation mandating pregnancy coverage that incorporated birth control prescriptions.

All it makes me ponder is that the example demonstrates why a nation cannot exist as free without very similar social norms and a similar worldview. Once "wonderful" diversity kicks it, it requires either an ever obtrusive government to dictate the worldview of people like you Al, or requires the country break apart.

While I find it interesting that some folks in comfortable and secure situations find it easy to lightly value the health and welfare of those not so richly blessed, outrage and eternal anger is the province of the right; I prefer to hope that one day the scales will fall.

Such an enlightening statement in one sentence. How do you know the situations of the people here? For instance, I am a small business owner and am looking large increases in premiums this year. BTW, based on my wife's conditions, I should be paying more. I'm thankful for the ability to pay. It would be far easier to just chuck it and let others pay for everything. So, I prefer not to be lectured by someone who knows nothing of my situation and postures as the wise master who makes announcements from on high. No one here is buying your obvious authoritarianism.

Basically, the statistics are tailored in such a way that there really couldn't be anything but a high percentage. Beyond the child bearing age range limit, the rest of the methodology seems designed to get a specific result.

So, those pregnant, or lactating, or trying to get pregnant women were indeed part of that 98 percent -- they just weren't currently using birth control.

Okay, I see that I need to make something clear again, though I thought I had done so already in response to Becky, above:

The Guttmacher document should probably technically not be called a "study," though I acquiesced in doing so in the main post. It is a summary of some data, written by some Guttmacher authors, from a much larger study done by *other people*. What we have in this document is an *assertion* about the percent of Catholic women who "have ever used" birth control. That assertion is not backed up by *any* of the more detailed data given in this document, and in particular not by the charts given in this document.

I found the charts in the document that had, at least, something to do with Catholic contraception use, and I analyzed those charts. Those charts *do not* include women who are postpartum or pregnant. Period. They expressly exclude them.

The 98% claim made in the document _may_ be intended to include those groups, though it does not expressly say. In actuality, I have some reason to believe that if the Guttmacher institute real-quick-like works up a shiny new chart in the light of this recent critique, it may _exclude_ those groups, though why is anybody's guess, especially if it's supposed to represent an "ever-used" statistic. We'll have to wait and see what happens if they come up with something new and look at it then.

In any event, a claim is just a claim. I was looking for data, not bare assertion. A bare assertion, even if it occurs in a document published by somebody-or-other with Guttmacher, is not _data_. The data that I found *does not* include the groups that I said it does not include. Look at the report for yourself.

Your analogy of Quakers and guns is inappropriate. There is no federal law mandating free ammunition for gun owners.

Um, yeah, that's why it was an analogy. See?

Should there be such a law? Would it be sensible? Presumably not.

There is one when it comes to health insurance and the inclusion of prescription birth control coverage. If you disagree with this law,so be it. But don't indulge in your own guilty pleasure of ignoring existing facts.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. An unjust law does not confer an obligation to obey it. So if this is an unjust law, which is presumably what might, y'know, be meant by what you prefer to call "not agreeing with it," then the Catholic organizations don't have a moral obligation to obey it. This brand-spanking-new diktat is just that--a diktat. Whether someone is obligated to obey it or not depends, inter alia, on whether it is inherently unjust or involves ordering the Catholic organizations to do something wrong. That they think it does is not a crazy belief, as most sexual liberals seem to want us all to assume. Even a Protestant can see that it is an understandable and not unreasonable position for them to take. It is the administration that is pushing this and rolling over perfectly legitimate conscientious objections. One doesn't even need to agree with the Catholic Church's concrete position to see that this extremely recent regulation made by an unelected official is extreme, unreasonable, and unjust. Only someone blinded by ideology cannot see that.

it is fairly obvious that it is shorthand for "Catholic women who are sexually active and of childbearing age."

No, no, it is "Catholic women who are sexually active and of childbearing age and not actively trying to get pregnant, and not actually pregnant, and not postpartum, and not unwilling to get pregnant if that's what God has in mind for their marital state, and not so conflicted about whether they want a child or don't want a child that they cannot figure out what is the "right" way to answer the question." THAT's the population the statistic is about. Do you have a shorthand way of naming that group?

Given that NFP has a 25% in-practice failure rate* compared to 1-10% of most other commonly used methods,

It is not. That's the standard statistic given for the calendar rhythm method, and that's not what NFP is. The failure rate for NFP under the least careful method of NFP is lower, and for the most careful method is much, much lower. Check your d**n facts before you throw them around here! 98%, 25%, what's a dirty false statistic between enemies, heh?

About those stats showing "birth control" methods such as no birth control method or natural family planning:

The most natural explanation of those stats is that they reflect a total usage pattern for the entire time period covered by the survey questions. So a Roman Catholic woman trying to avoid pregnancy yet fresh from a bender over at Clancy's Bar could report her escapades on that occasion as "no method" and more sober sexual activities under one of the other methods of birth control.

That way it's not a problem if the totals don't end up at or near 100 percent (didn't add them up but at first blush it seemed like they'd go over 100 percent).

That said, the stats are still highly suspect. Certainly PolitiFact's treatment was a colossal failure at clarifying the issue for any but the brainwashed left. Essentially it was an indirect way of telling us to trust the Guttmacher Institute. It remains unclear how the Guttmacher folks reached their conclusions with the survey data.

Holy smokes. It looks like Guttmacher didn't do anything more than just use the tables that it had no business using to argue its point. They make the identical caveats about the data that we see at the primary source.

The worse for them and the better for the power of your criticism, Lydia.

"Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women."

That is a statement about "all women who have had sex" who "have ever used" contraception.

In contrast, the study's Figure 3 and Supplementary Table to Figure 3 is not about contraceptive use at any time by all women who have had sex. The Figure 3 data is about current contraceptive use among women who are under 45, sexually active, not pregnant, not post-partum and not trying to get pregnant. It reports that 11% of all such women, and 11% of all such Catholic women, are not currently using contraception.

You might ask Guttmacher to clarify what is the source of the statement about contraceptive use at any time by "all women who have had sex." Because it's not clear, as you have concluded, that the Figure 3 data is the basis for it. It certainly shouldn't be.

-- I am sorry, I am going to have to invoke the Godwin Rule here... you invoke Nazis and I am the troll? I almost nothing about civil disobedience. I have heard a lot of demands that the law be changed to suit the RCC. Frankly, in this case, I see two courses of action: (1) the organizations stop providing insurance or (2) they comply because health insurance companies will only provide insurance packages that include BC, neither of which meets the definition of civil disobedience because neither are breaking the law. The only exception is if the organizations, usually hospitals, self-insure. If they do, they can choose to continue to not cover BC, putting them in violation of the law.

Making the argument is not civil disobedience. Lobbying the HHS to change the regulation is not civil disobedience, lobbying Congress to pass legislation is not civil disobedience -- that is legal participation in the public sphere. I don't think the USCCB has a good or constitutionally sound argument and I think they are going about it in an unproductive and unbecoming way, but I don't dispute their right to make the argument.

-- While strictly speaking, failing to provide coverage does not prevent anyone from buying it independently, the reality of the situation as I am fairly confident you know and certain the bishops know, that failing to provide coverage does, in fact, prevent people from accessing it. And that is the point! Drugs, without coverage, are expensive and if you are an CNA making little more than minimum wage at a Catholic hospital, you probably will not be able to afford $50-$150/month for birth control. Sure, if the only reason for accessing these drugs was contraception, one can argue there are other options, even if less than optimal, that are "affordable." But, like I have explained, a very large percent of these drugs are prescribed for non-contraceptive purposes and thus it is depriving women of health care.

-- The law that was passed gave the Sec. of the HHS the authority to determine what qualified as "preventative care," and the HHS list is considered pretty standard in the medical community (it would almost certainly be challenged in court if it wasn't - but I haven't heard that strategy being purposed). That process is pretty standard -- various pieces of legislation lay out the goals and then give authority to the regulatory agency to come up with the specific requirements. If you have a problem with that, you have a problem with the way Congress writes legislation.

-- That I wasn't able to convey my understanding of the stat is really unfortunate because I teach statistics... they were not asking how many Catholic women followed the Church's teaching. They were asking what are the family planning choices women make (how do they avoid contraception when they don't want to conceive), Catholic women being a subset of them. If you've taken the possibility of forming a family biologically off the table by choosing to be chaste, than you do not not have family planning choices to make. It would be like surveying kids who didn't go to college what class took their first semester of college. The interesting part is not that essentially all Catholic women use or have used contraception, it is that when making family planning choices, they make essentially the same choices as non-Catholics. And including nuns, especially if you exclude the post-menopausal women, isn't going to make any appreciable difference because they represents 0.2% of the female Catholic population, all 72,000 of them, and many more of them are over 90 than are under 30. But the 98% figure isn't about whether the decision was right or wrong, which is a constitutional question at this point, but how much support from Catholic voters Obama might lose over it -- the 98% figure indicates that, at least among women, less than might be expected based on the bishop's reaction.

The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the likelihood of such a reference or comparison arising increases as the discussion progresses.

The problem with Goodwin's Law is that it fails to recognize the reason Nazi and fascist get used like there is no tomorrow. The Nazi's are pretty much the only modern, significant group that liberals/progressives will agree with anyone else that they were morally wrong. Communists, nope, just the wrong people in charge. Islamists, nope, just a bunch of people oppressed by the West. Now orthodox religious groups are looked at by the left as Nazi's and fascists, but obviously the orthodox disagree so you can't use them as some comparison. Instead everyone is left with one frame of reference of what is evil. I mean you can't even use the Japanese because that would be racist. So, Goodwin's Law really highlights that relativism done a lot to destroy the ability to achieve a common understanding of evil.

The stats are hard to come by, but I've seen estimates that ~40% of hormonal birth control is prescribed for reasons other than contraception,

But, like I have explained, a very large percent of these drugs are prescribed for non-contraceptive purposes and thus it is depriving women of health care.

Yes, Abra, you said it, but you have not supported your "explanation" with FACTS, just with assertions. And since we already saw that your assertions about facts can be off target, we have little reason to accept these assertions either.

Furthermore, you are yourself ignoring a different aspect of the very problem you raise: if a woman is using hormones to FIX a hormonal imbalance, (i.e. for health care that is in fact health care instead of interfering with the normal, ordinary function of the ovaries and uterus), this sometimes IS covered by insurance that doesn't cover contraceptives. Depending on the insurance plan, it's not the DRUG that is not covered, but the CONTRACEPTIVE USE of the drug that is not covered. If you are so enamored of HHS rules, why not just have HHS write a rule that prescribing the drug for purposes of actual _health_ care has to be covered, because -hey, imagine a health care law being, you know, about HEALTH - that's kind of what the nation had in mind in agreeing to a health care law.

Actually, every story I've read that addresses this states that at that point they will have to pay fines. Which looks like they would be doing something fine-able under the law and being punished.

failing to provide coverage does, in fact, prevent people from accessing it.

And failing to provide "steak coverage" prevents people from buying steaks. Whoop-de-doo! Again, the juvenile entitlement mindset here is simply shouting. And they can't buy condoms, which aren't terribly expensive, if they're all that determined to prevent a pregnancy and don't share the Church's view? Please.

Tony has repeatedly addressed your "using this for other reasons" claim. Besides, you keep undermining the sincerity of that claim about the true source of your concern with all your talk about "family planning. In fact, all the stats about women _using_ hormonal pills as contraception undermine the claim that they are getting them for other reasons. If they're getting them for other reasons, then why are they listing themselves as using them for contraception on a survey? And why does it seem that if they want to get pregnant they can manage to do without this "health care" at that time? Seems like an _extremely_ ambiguous and shaky claim that a "very large percent" are non-contraceptive.

They were asking what are the family planning choices women make (how do they avoid contraception when they don't want to conceive), Catholic women being a subset of them.

Yeah, well, y'know, that was what I said in the main post.

So, _how_ relevant is this again to the percentage of Catholic women, even of childbearing age, who *have a use for contraception*? Not very. I also pointed that out in the main post. I get tired of repeating myself.

Oh, and by the way: If _that's_ the question one is asking (the "what family planning choices women make when they definitely don't want to conceive," blah blah) then an "ever-used" statistic is not relevant, Figure 3 _is_ relevant, and the number is 87% for Catholic women, not 98%. So by all means, go on trumpeting to the world that this is what we're "really talking about," because if you do, you'll be undermining Guttmacher's and Politifact's and the administrations honesty directly, as in that case they should have said 87% instead of 98%!

They want to cling to the 98%. That is becoming increasingly obvious. See Rachel Jones's snarky response to the WP blog's contact. They want to cling to a sentence in that document that isn't supported by figure 3. That's because 98% sounds so darned impressive, more impressive psychologically than 87%. They really don't feel like retracting it. And they're highly unlikely to define what they "were talking about all along" in a way that forces them to do so. Far more likely that they'll insist that "ever-used" is what they were talking about all along and then try to gerrymander something that allows them to stick to 98%. And "ever-used," of course, if that's what they choose to hang their hats on, needn't mean "used regularly," or "this is how Catholic women avoid pregnancy," or anything of the type. It could be one teenage sexual encounter, a decade or two ago, long-since repented and left behind, with a male partner wearing a condom!

It makes it appear that the Guttmacher folks used a sample of women who were using some form of contraception to estimate the percentage of contraceptive use. Nothing wrong with that, is there? :-)

Those who are not using contraception are then classified by the following reasons for nonuse:
+
they are currently pregnant or postpartum
+
they are trying to become pregnant
+
they have never had intercourse or have not had intercourse in 3 months before interview
+ they (or their partner) are sterile.
Those who are using contraception are classified by the method or methods they are using. About 10 percent of women in Cycle 6 indicated multiple contraceptive methods are being used at the time of interview. For these women, CONSTAT1 is coded as the most effective method they are using.

Okay, first of all, and just for the record (in case it matters), this is the 2002 NSFG, whereas Guttmacher says its statements are based on 2006-2008 NSFG. For the 2010 publication from the CDC (which reader Keith linked above), the lengthy and apparently comparable report does not appear (based on electronic search) to contain religious data.

Second, Bryan White, you say,

It makes it appear that the Guttmacher folks used a sample of women who were using some form of contraception to estimate the percentage of contraceptive use. Nothing wrong with that, is there? :-)

I don't know if this is meant as irony, perhaps? Obviously, if you are estimating the percentage of women using contraception and you restrict your chart only to women using contraception, your percentage will be 100%. This is, in fact, what we find in Table 60 of the report you just linked. Obviously, "non-users" have been excluded from that table and from several others. Just to make things more interesting, NFP is lumped together with methods such as the contraceptive sponge under a category of "other methods" even in those tables giving various percentages of methods!

The 2002 "ever-used" table, which is similar to an "ever-used" table that I found on p. 19 of the more recent NSFG report, does not break down by religion. I believe in the 2002 report which you just linked, that is table 53. It also lists NFP as "a method" of contraception, by the way, so the aggregate number of women who have "ever used any method of contraception" could include women who have only ever used NFP!

Do you know what an analogy is? When there is no parallel equivalence that A is to B as C is to D (A:B=C:D) it is not really an analogy. You can call it one, but it's not. For example, you can claim that a cat is to a dog as a female is to a male, but that is not an analogy.

The Guttmacher study specifically noted that the 98% who have, at some time, used birth control, included all women who had been sexually active in the past 3 months. This group would include pregnant women, lactating women and women trying to get pregnant -- unless you somehow believe that no women with these three conditions could possibly be sexually active. It appears that you do not want to believe the data in the Guttmacher study. That's up to you, but why then waste your time criticizing people for misinterpreting a study you don't even believe in?

Finally, you can argue all you want about not obeying unjust laws. Again, as long as we establish that the law does exist to begin with, argue all you want. The large majority of Americans of all religions -- including Catholics -- disagree with you.

You can take a position that birth control is immoral, and should be illegal. But distorting facts, dismissing data because you don't like them, and creating false parallels does not do your cause any good. You just end up preaching to choir. An increasingly small choir, at that.

The Guttmacher study specifically noted that the 98% who have, at some time, used birth control, included all women who had been sexually active in the past 3 months.

This is an unclear statement. The 98% assertion (which is merely an assertion) is about sexually experienced women, including both sexually active and, presumably, sexually inactive women. So, yes, it "included" women who are sexually active in the last three months, but it would most naturally be taken to include more than those.

However, the _documentation_ in the report does _not_ include pregnant women, etc. It is limited to women "at risk for an unintended pregnancy." That is why the documentation in the report does not support the 98% _assertion_ in the report. An assertion is just an assertion. It isn't a statistical argument. It is not data.

My contention is that the bare assertion about 98% of Catholic women in the Guttmacher report is unsubstantiated as yet by any detailed data that I have been able to find, including the data in the report itself! None of the charts, for example, support this assertion.

When you say I "don't want to believe data," you seem to think that a bare assertion by Guttmacher is the same thing as carefully documented data. It isn't. If Guttmacher has data supporting this assertion, they should make those data available.

Please remember, again, that Guttmacher did not do the research, here. They are data-mining from the NSFG. They are not in some privileged position as "the scientists who did a study." It isn't like that. And even scientists who do a study are supposed to document their assertions, not merely make them and expect them to be taken on faith. All the more so if the assertions are challenged and the evidence requested. So far that evidence has not been forthcoming. I don't know how much clearer I can be.

You can take a position that birth control is immoral, and should be illegal.

I have never taken that position and can only conjecture that you are bringing it up out of the blue because you like to hear yourself talk or because this is the latest talking point among leftists: Watch out! The conservatives are coming to take your birth control away! We know that because they oppose forcing Catholic organizations to subsidize it!

How puerile.

As for preaching to the choir, that's particularly amusing given that my name recognition has probably never been higher, and that as a result of this post. Not that I actually care, but your attempt to be deprecatory about "preaching to the choir" just has an especially sweet unintended irony to it just now...

The study seems to suggest that among Catholic women who desire to contracept, 98% do so. Infertility, or at least impaired fecundity, in the U.S. is around 10%, so those women are out of the mix. Then there are those of us who practice nfp - often in our lives we are pregnant, post-partum or ttc - our babies being spaced 2 to 3 years apart. All of us are thrown out as well. Since that group of women is not pertinent to the study, it would only be fair to also excude those who are not currently contracepting but have contracepted in the past!

I'd like to see the percentage number whittled down in the following steps:

1. Of all Catholic women, what percentage had sex in the last 3 months?

2. Of those, what percentage were married and having that sex with their spouse?

3. Of those, what percentage are regular Mass attenders and have generally orthodox beliefs in areas unrelated to contraception (e.g. belief in the Virgin Birth, the Bodily Resurrection of Christ, the Real Presence in the Eucharist)?

4. Of those, what percentage used artificial contraception to reduce the likelihood of conceiving during any coital act in the last 3 months?

Once you've whittled the whole group down to THAT number, I'd like to ask some questions about THAT group (call it Group X). For example:

5. Of Group X, what percentage went to confession to receive absolution from that sin shortly thereafter? and,

6. Of Group X, what percentage would rather not use artificial contraception but feel pressured to by an unbelieving, Protestant, or dissenting spouse?

7. Of Group X, what percentage are actual dissenters, meaning that they use contraception entirely without moral qualm and don't confess it at Reconciliation?

8. Of Group X, what percentage are dissenters without knowing or intending to be, because they were taught the faith by a wishy-washy dissenter who said that contraception was okay "in the Spirit of Vatican II" or some such phrasing, and who has never heard differently in any homily at Mass?

I think these numbers are the really pertinent ones.

After all, there are "catholics" and then there are "Catholics" in the sense that there are folk who are culturally Catholic but who don't really buy that Jesus is God, died for our sins, and rose from the dead. I wouldn't expect them to be faithful to the Church's teaching on contraception, and wouldn't regard it to be a huge embarrassment for the Church that they weren't.

And there are probably Catholic women who didn't contracept with their spouse in the last month, but who had an affair with another man and decided to contracept. I don't call either decision right, of course...but to lump them in with knowing dissenters is really lumping apples with orangutans.

And there are probably Catholic women, perhaps who are married to dissenters or atheists or who are recent converts whose spouses didn't convert and who're still trying to find a new Standard Operating Procedure with their spouses, who regard contracepting sinful but feel pressured into it because of the risk of marital strife. It doesn't make sin not be sin, but if they're going to Reconciliation to confess it, they know that...which means you can't really lump them in with dissenters, either.

Anyhow, those are the numbers I'm interested in. They boil down to this: What percentage of Catholic women, who're really Catholic in every other way, really reject the Church's teaching on Contraception?

I expect the number will still be frightfully high. Probably more than a majority.

And there are probably Catholic women, perhaps who are married to dissenters or atheists or who are recent converts whose spouses didn't convert and who're still trying to find a new Standard Operating Procedure with their spouses, who regard contracepting sinful but feel pressured into it because of the risk of marital strife. It doesn't make sin not be sin, but if they're going to Reconciliation to confess it, they know that...which means you can't really lump them in with dissenters, either.

Very good point. I have known women in this situation. They are typically not part of the crowd that would approve of the health care mandate for coverage.

I do appreciate that you are posting all responses to your blog, and engage in discussion with your commenters -- even people such as myself, who strongly disagree with you.

You appear to resort to insults and name calling instead of making rational points.
As far as your repeated objections to the "98%" figure, I really think that you are quibbling with minor details. The question I would like you to answer is, do you accept that an overwhelming majority of fecund Catholic women who are sexually active use contraception to prevent pregnancy? All reliable date suggests that this is the truth, and recent polls indicate that a majority of lay Catholics support the current federal law and Obama Administration policy. What data do you have that contradicts these finding?

Secondly, you accuse me of misstating your position on birth control, because I wrote "You can can take a position that birth control is immoral and should be illegal" . My language was very precise, and I did not ascribe this argument as being your personal position. However, you made the argument in your response to my earliest comment that -- "[a]n unjust law does not confer an obligation to obey it. So if this is an unjust law, which is presumably what might, y'know, be meant by what you prefer to call "not agreeing with it," then the Catholic organizations don't have a moral obligation to obey it. This brand-spanking-new diktat is just that--a diktat. Whether someone is obligated to obey it or not depends, inter alia, on whether it is inherently unjust or involves ordering the Catholic organizations to do something wrong..." So, you did actually put forward a position regarding the immorality of birth control. Maybe this is not your personal point of view, but your entire argument against this law is based on this moral judgement, whether as a personal position, or writing as an advocate for the Catholic Church.

No, my argument about the statistic is based on the fact that the statistic is unsubstantiated. I've said this over and over again.

As for "overwhelming majority," I guess that depends on what you mean by "overwhelming." The statistics thus far given do not support anything like a claim that, say, "98% of fecund Catholic women who are sexually active use contraception to prevent pregnancy." The table, even with all its exclusions, already takes us down to 87%. Who knows what number we would have gotten if the table discussed in the main post were supplemented by actually including the excluded groups? Elsewhere the Guttmacher document asserts that approximately 14% of married women are postpartum, pregnant, or actively trying to get pregnant at any given time. If we accept that number and factor that in there, we're going to have something lower still. It's difficult to tell how much lower, since the chart includes unmarried as well as married women. Perhaps down to 80%? 75%? I don't know. We haven't been given those statistics in a fashion that is easy to combine. Would 75% be an "overwhelming majority"? Not nearly as overwhelming as 98%.

And why only discuss those who are sexually active, anyway, if our interest is in a question like, "Are Catholic Church teachings something normal people are actually living by?" or "What percentage of Catholic women have a use for contraception?"

No, I don't consider these issues to be quibbles.

And my argument about the injustice of the administration's diktat is that the Catholic Church's position is not whacked or insane and that the goal of _subsidizing_ every woman's contraception by government requirement is not mission-critical. I would say that a lot of positions--for example, vegetarianism--are not whacked or insane, and that a goal of subsidizing everybody's meat by government requirement is also not mission-critical. Even though I'm not a vegetarian and am not advocating the position that meat-eating is wrong. Hence, a law requiring vegetarian employers to violate their consciences and fund their employees' meat would also be unjust.

This is not really hard to understand.

The conditions under which it makes sense to squelch someone's religiously informed conscience are pretty restricted to extreme situations and problems. Obviously, if a person has a conscience so misformed, by religion or otherwise, that he thinks he has a duty to blow up shopping malls or to starve his children to death, you don't let him do that.

But there is plenty of leeway in a free country populated and ruled by reasonable people for a variety of issues on which people can respectfully disagree and allow each other freedom of conscience.

If helping people to obtain contraception by funding it isn't a textbook case of such an issue, I really don't know what is.

So, no, I am not acting as an "advocate of the Catholic Church" vis a vis their actual position on the morality of contraception. I am acting as an advocate for being sensible about what sorts of situations constitute a call for government to coerce people against their conscience. "Sally can't get someone else to purchase her birth control pills" is *obviously* not one of those situations. If you can't see that, there isn't much I can say to help you out. If our rulers can't see that, and if they are allowed to put such coercion in place, then a species of totalitarianism is taking over our country very rapidly.

Jeffrey Ellis, you are really just embarrassing yourself with this stuff -- "but your entire argument against this law is based on this moral judgement [against contraception], whether as a personal position, or writing as an advocate for the Catholic Church."

Perhaps it would behoove you to investigate such questions as: what is Lydia McGrew's religious affiliation? Does that religion teach against contraception? Has Lydia McGrew taken a public position on contraception?

Upon completion of these investigations, I suspect you will feel embarrassed.

and recent polls indicate that a majority of lay Catholics support the current federal law and Obama Administration policy. What data do you have that contradicts these finding?

You would think that people might learn something for a change. Jeffrey, how about actually citing some recent polls, instead of just claiming it? See, around here we try to back up our claims like that with a citation. No citation, no respect.

However, you made the argument in your response to my earliest comment that -- "[a]n unjust law does not confer an obligation to obey it. So if this is an unjust law, which is presumably what might, y'know, be meant by what you prefer to call "not agreeing with it," then the Catholic organizations don't have a moral obligation to obey it. This brand-spanking-new diktat is just that--a diktat. Whether someone is obligated to obey it or not depends, inter alia, on whether it is inherently unjust or involves ordering the Catholic organizations to do something wrong..." So, you did actually put forward a position regarding the immorality of birth control.

No, actually, she didn't. Lydia referred to a position about the justice or injustice of a law mandating insurance coverage. Since there is more than one reason such a law might be unjust, merely proposing a position that it is unjust is not putting forward a position about the immorality of the act that the law coerces subsidies for. The Catholic orgs can argue that the law is unjust and that it fails to bind even if they don't argue that contraception is immoral. It does so happen that Catholics argue that contraception is immoral, but the law can be an unjust law that fails to bind EVEN IF contraception is moral, and EVEN IF Catholics don't claim that it is immoral. It may, for example, be the case that the law is an overreach of government even though it demands nothing immoral. Lydia allows scope for this possibility for why one need not obey such a law.

My guess is that if you ask the question, "What percentage of sexually active Catholic women who are orthodox Catholics in every other way regularly use artificial contraception without believing it to be sinful and without confessing it to a priest or holding back from the Eucharist when they have done so?" ...the answer under 50%, though not by much.

But if you start including self-described Catholics who're sexually active but unmarried, or having sex with someone who isn't their spouse, or who don't believe in the Real Presence, or Catholics who don't believe that the Pope has a charism of infallibility when teaching the whole Church on faith and morals, or who're all in favor of sacramental marriages for gay couples or the ordaining of women, or Catholics who're uncertain whether they really believe in God or that it even matters? Then, yes, for such 'Catholics' I'm sure the answer is north of 90%.

Also, if you include not only use of artificial contraception in the last three months, but use of it at any time in one's life, then plenty of currently-obedient adult converts and reverts will be snagged, and the number will climb yet higher, albeit meaninglessly.

And of course if you allow either percentage to include "all Catholic women" instead of just "married sexually active fertile Catholic women" then of course the percentage who are disobedient drops. That goes without saying. In one sense the number becomes less meaningful since you're now including nuns and post-menopausal women and such. But it's still meaningful as a correction to that 98% claim, if/when the 98% number is being described as "98% of all Catholic women."

As one who presents studies on a daily basis as part of my job, knowing the manipulation that can occur, I appreciate you examining the possibility of a slanted interpretation or bad data. Thank you for that...I, too picked up on the "fishiness" of such a high number of Catholics using contraception.

As a devout Catholic myself, I would like to point out one other error. The study indicated that the Catholic women they interviewed reported that only 30% of them attended mass weekly. This is one of the first problems. Attending mass weekly is required of every Catholic and is considered a sin if not fulfilled (exceptions are made for major issues such as major illness). If they interviewed all of these "Catholic" women and the majority (70%) are not even fulfilling one of the simplest obligations of their faith, they are certainly NOT going to follow the church's teaching on contraception. That 70% is what we call "cafeteria Catholics" who go down the line picking and choosing what they do/do not believe. They are NOT representative of the faithful Catholics who would be most affected and offended by the HHS mandate. I myself practice NFP and know MANY, MANY more Catholic women who also choose NFP. I don't know where they got their nationally representative sample from, but I would suggest they try again!

While it is true that many Catholic women do choose contraception, as several others have pointed out, that does NOT negate church teaching. It is the Catholic church, not a "majority rules" democracy. Regardless of how many women knowingly choose to commit this sin, that will not and should not ever change the Catholic church's stance on contraception. Lydia, I also appreciate you posting a link to information on the Humane Vitae. So many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, do not understand the "why" behind the teaching. So many look at it as the church being unfair and telling us what we can't do or what we can't have. But rather, It is truly a beautiful teaching that is actually about what the union of man and woman is supposed to be and what it can create (no, not just babies!) if we allow God to be a part of it. Contraception, it is taught, removes God from the act, thereby morphing the act into less, much less, than the gift God intended it to be for a couple united in marriage. I would encourage anyone, ESPECIALLY Catholics to study the "why" before you make a judgement on the church's stance on contraception.

All of that being said...the problem with the HHS mandate is ultimately a problem with religious freedoms. It terrifies me to think that I live in a country where the government takes it upon itself to say that it is going to FORCE you to pay for and provide something that is expressly against your religious belief. It is tyranny. Period. To allow for a morality clause in this mandate would not force anyone to go without contraception if they so choose. Everyone has a choice! And if you as an employee do not like the insurance plan that your employers provide because it doesn't cover contraception, you are free to find an employer that does, or pay for it out of pocket. No one is forced to go without. But the Church would be FORCED to go against its belief if this thing stands. Again, tyranny.

I'd actually go beyond that. The HHS mandate is "religious freedoms" only because the moral problem happens to be associated with a religion.

But there is a broader "freedom of conscience" of which "religious freedom" is a specimen. Remember that the Bill of Rights expressly states that the enumeration of freedoms and rights herein is not to be construed to mean that individuals' rights are limited to those enumerated, but only that those enumerated are among the rights individuals have, and that there are others. Free exercise of religion is only the starting-point; individuals have broader liberty than that.

I bring this up because members of other faiths and secularists really need to perk their ears up and pay attention. It is their freedom of conscience which is abridged by this precedent.

Allow me an analogy to make the point....

The Vegan Analogy

Say that you’re a Vegan, and you decide to start a not-for-profit community organization offering free school lunches for poor kids and tutoring at-risk kids in the afternoons. You “brand” it as a “Vegan” charity; with signage associating it with Veganism. As part of that, you have a cafeteria in your headquarters…though of course it doesn’t serve meat. And all the school lunches you pack and after-school snacks you offer to the kids being tutored are vegetarian.

In comes the Federal Government. They say, “Guess what? We’re instituting a program which says that, since all employees have to eat, all employers must provide a cafeteria to employees.”

No problem, you think: You already do.

Later, the Federal Government revises the policy a bit: “Because all employees have to eat, but some of them lack the money to buy a good meal, we’re requiring that all company cafeterias must serve meals for free.”

Annoying, but still no problem, you reason. You can just lower your employee salaries by whatever it takes to cover compliance costs. You’re not a libertarian free-marketer so you see no reason to oppose the mandate on love-of-liberty principles. Or, maybe you are a liberty-lover, but it’s too much hassle to fight city hall over something that really doesn’t bug you all that much.

Then the Federal Government comes in and says, “Because all employees have to have protein in their diet, and because the human body is clearly omnivorous not purely herbivorous, if your organization has a cafeteria it must serve meals which include meat in quantities compliant with the FDA food pyramid guidelines.”

At this point, you balk. “Hey,” you think, “the Federal Government is forcing me to provide for my employees’ needs in a way which I think is immoral!”

So, you ask for an exception to be made for Vegan organizations, as a matter of conscience.
The Federal Government replies, “Understood. We value your liberty to follow your conscience, so we will offer an exception for Vegan organizations on the meat requirement.”

Excellent, you think. And it stays that way for fifty years.

Then one day, out of the blue, the Federal Government radically tightens the exemption, not even through a law, but through executive-branch regulation.

Now, all of a sudden, the only Vegan organizations that are exempt from the meat requirement are those which (a.) are staffed only by Vegans, with no non-Vegan volunteers or employees, and (b.) only serve Vegans as part of their organizational mission, and do not attempt to serve non-Vegans.

Any Vegan organization not falling within that narrow exemption is required to serve meat lunches and snacks, or pay a crushing fine annually.

Suddenly, your organization is screwed. You have mostly Vegan employees, but you’ve never minded non-Vegans working there as secretaries and whatnot. You like and respect your non-Vegan employees. Furthermore, you’ve always served disadvantaged kids whether they’re Vegan or not.

But now, it’s either serve steak and hot dogs, or pay a couple of million dollars in fines every year.

Since you refuse to do the former as a matter of conscience, and since the latter will destroy your whole budget for charitable work in months, there’s no option: You must close down. You’re screwed. Probably your offices and gear will be bought at fire-sale prices by non-Vegan charities doing the same kind of work.

That is what the Federal Government is doing to Catholics, some Eastern Orthodox and Conservative Evangelicals, and some Conservative/Orthodox Jews and Muslims, with the new HHS requirements. It obligates them to provide health insurance to all employees, with abortifacients and artificial contraception and sterilization required to be covered.
This they cannot do, so it is driving them out of charitable work in education and health care and pretty much anything that involves them doing good works for persons who aren’t necessarily members of their faith. That’s because ministering to folk outside their faith takes them outside the exemption. And, it’ll likewise force them to fire employees that aren’t members, for the same reason.

The Compromise: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

That was the Obama policy prior to the “compromise.”

Then came the “compromise” which really changed nothing: Religious organizations are still forced to provide health insurance, but the organization is not obligated to pay for the contraception, abortifacients, et cetera. Oh, no. No, only the health insurance company is forced to "provide" it, for "free," with no excluding it from any plans, and no change in price between those who use it and those who don't. Which means, of course, that they'll roll all the costs into the costs of their plans...which are, of course, being paid for by the religious organizations who are morally forbidden to pay for such things, but whom the government is forcing to buy insurance.

To return to our Vegan analogy: Instead of the Vegans having to serve the steaks themselves, they are forced by law to hire a caterer, and all caterers are forced by law to provide steaks as a “free,” non-optional add-on to all meals. Of course the employee or kid doesn’t have to eat the steak, but it’ll be on the tray regardless, and since the caterers have to provide it with all meals for no extra charge, they way they pay for it is by rolling the cost into what their customers (read: the Vegan organizations) pay for catering.
That’s the “compromise.”

What To Do

As usual, let us all pray seriously and continuously.

But folks, there is a time for civil disobedience. We're talking opening up health insurance cooperatives that circumvent the regulations in ways that are probably illegal. We're talking about chaining yourself to the White House fence in protest. We're talking about sit-ins and standing in front of the fire hoses.

If the Obamichus Epiphanes Administration doesn't turn back and take a more Cyrus-like approach, well...this is pretty much that time.

And, it really ought to be that time for atheists and Buddhists, also. The freedom of religion is the narrowly-mentioned item in the Bill of Rights; but freedom of conscience for Vegans is also at stake. It is not just Quakers and Amish folk who, under this precedent, can be commanded to fund military recruiting drives. It's not just that Jews can be commanded to buy pork chops with their every meal. It's that anyone can be commanded to positively pay for anything regardless of their reservations of conscience, at executive command, without legislative action.

Of course it's unconstitutional. It'll fail when it reaches SCOTUS. I don't even think Obamichus Epiphanes' own appointed Justices would rule in favor of it.

But, y'know, it takes years for a lawsuit to work its way up to the highest court. The Administration says folks have one year to figure out how to violate their consciences, or else close down all their businesses and charities and hospitals and schools.

If you secular-types don't have a problem with that, ask yourself: How would you feel with President Pat Robertson having that kind of power?

Similarly, married Catholic women are probably more likely not to be attempting to avoid pregnancy, even using Natural Family Planning, than non-Catholic women.

Did you bother reading the study? It found that the percentage of women who were pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or were post-partem was the same regardless of religious affiliation.

Ditto for sexual experience.

These findings were not hidden away somewhere, they're in big giant bullet points right under the heading called "Findings".

The study quite clearly shows that contraceptive use among Catholics does not differ significantly from other groups. And you can't explain this away by pretending that Catholic women are following the Church's dictates to remain celibate or breed like rabbits. They're doing neither.

Tony -- since you apparently don't have the time to do it yourself, here is the most recent polling information on Catholic support for birth control coverage:http://publicreligion.org/research/2012/02/january-tracking-poll-2012/
There are other polls with similar results that can be found by Googling the topic. I leave that to your initiative. I wonder why you do not ask Lydia for some statistics that refute the research of the Guttmacher Institute's study.As for your last comment, I honestly have no idea what you're point is. The Catholic Church opposes the recent insurance mandate because it opposes the use of birth control. Period.

Lydia -- While I understand your original article did not deal with any moral/legal issues surrounding the use of contraception, your comments have repeatedly supported the Catholic Church's moral position on the issue, and you have advocated that religious precepts should often trump the law -- and specifically when it comes to the issue of contraception. I have no idea what your personal position is, but on public policy, you have come down squarely on the side of the Catholic Church. You have every right to question the data contained in the Guttmacher study. A single research study does not mean the final word on any issue. But until a another one comes along, I do not believe you have provided sufficient statistical backing for your own position.

Paul J Cella -- I am not at all embarrassed, but thanks for the advice. See my note to Lydia above. I do not care about professed personal positions. We are discussing public policy questions, not personal ones. I have respect for those who's personal moral positions are different that mine. But Lydia's position is based on public policy and the law, not personal morality.

I look forward to the name calling, insults and attempts at belittlement to follow. Thanks.

Did you bother reading the study? It found that the percentage of women who were pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or were post-partem was the same regardless of religious affiliation.

I get a little tired of repeating myself. Assertions are not data. Guttmacher did not "do a study." The NSFG asked a gazillion survey questions on many, many topics, and Guttmacher came along and data-mined to see what statistics they could work up that would seem to stick it to the Catholic Church. The thing about the 14% is itself one of the assertions for which the background data were not provided for examination.

More: If 14% of married women are in those situations (pregnant, etc.), then whatever the relative numbers among various religious groups, the absolute percentages currently using contraception must be significantly lower than the totals given that excluded those groups and, of course, strikingly lower than 98%.

The bottom line is explained in Matthew 13, the narrow path. It is hard and there are few who will walk/find it. Those who truly want to follow Christ will lead prayerful lives that will lead them to a true dependence and appreciation for the Sacraments. They will become Eucharistic and then self sacrifice and living the faith will come naturally.

Any Catholic (or so called Catholic) who claims that using NFP or not using contraception is too hard is not living the true faith that Christ left to us.

The problem is modernism. Modernism has crept into the Church and these days you have to often drive into the next county or community to find a parish with a priest faithful to Magesterial teachings. Unfortunatly, most Parishes today are full of modernism and scandal. By scandal, I mean that you see almost every family with 2 kids and no one, including the priest will admonish them. Sometimes a priest will make a vailid effort and only hint that families should be open to life. Often times these parishes then complain to the Chancery and the preist is told to cool it. God help us.

There is indeed a schism in the Western Catholic Church. It is just not been openly declared yet. By this I mean that few parishes are conservative and have a holy and faithful priest. In the parishes that do, you will see large families, many Marian and Eucharistic devotions, as well as a sense of reverence for the Sacraments, including long lines for confession.The homilies are truthful, challenge the faithful to move deeper towards God and often talk about the realities of the New Age, contraception, mortal sin, etc.

In liberal type parishes, you will see almost every family have 2 or less children, there will seldom be parish devotionals or Eucharistic Adoration (we are too busy to come here during the week), and there is an understanding that the homilies there will never challenge or admonish. The usual homily will be about how God loves us unconditionally or social justice, etc,.

My point is that a conservative Catholic who truly wants to follow the true Faith will not be happy in a liberal parish just as a dissenting Liberal Catholic will not want to hear the truth in a conservative parish.

People want to live all the pleasures of the world and still convince their consciences that they are Catholic. How many times are we told in the Gospels that the two don't mix. Wake up people! You don't need that bigger house or that third vehicle or RV. You don' need to go to Disneyland every year either. If you go to Mass every week and say AMEN when the priest holds up the Body of Christ, you had better make sure that you are doing all you can to make sure that your soul is in the state of grace and prepared to recieve Jesus.

As I said above, Mr. Ellis, if you were to carefully investigate the question "Has Lydia McGrew taken a public position on contraception?" (notice I said public position), you would be embarrassed by your continual advertizing of your own stubborn ignorance.

your comments have repeatedly supported the Catholic Church's moral position on the issue, and you have advocated that religious precepts should often trump the law -- and specifically when it comes to the issue of contraception.

No, my comments have supported the meta-level position that the Catholic Church's moral position is not _crazy_ and that it is worthy of enough respect that the government should not try to force Catholic employers to violate their conscience on this issue. Even an atheist libertine, if he had common sense, should be able to see that. You don't seem even to understand the difference between that and "supporting the Catholic Church's moral position."

Paul J Cella -- Yes, Lydia has taken a public position on contraception, specifically as it relates to the Catholic Church's anti-birth control policy -- what she describes above as a "meta-position". What you appear to misunderstand is that I am not talking about positions of personal moral choice. I neither know nor care about Lydia's own personal beliefs or practices regarding contraception. But if she comes down on the side of the institutional Catholic Church on the issue of contraception -- whether she calls it a "meta-position" or anything else, the answer is definitely YES, she has taken a public position.

Lydia -- "my comments have supported the meta-level position that the Catholic Church's moral position is not _crazy_ and that it is worthy of enough respect that the government should not try to force Catholic employers to violate their conscience on this issue. Even an atheist libertine, if he had common sense, should be able to see that. You don't seem even to understand the difference between that and "supporting the Catholic Church's moral position."

Unfortunately, I am not an atheist libertine. However, your tortuous qualifying claim that you are taking a "meta-level position" is not a particularly convincing argument . You can call me names, and insult me as much as you wish, but your support for the Catholic Church on this issue is very clear. And that is where we differ.

Paul J Cella -- CORRECTION -- of course I mistyped "meta-level position". No doubt you know what I was referring to, but wanted to note it for the record.

Not only did I not _say_ that you were, but my use of that phrase did not _imply_ that you were. It's like saying, "That would make a sailor blush." The implication is not that one's interlocutor is a sailor. Good grief. Does one have to point out even one's use of ordinary manners of speech?

your tortuous qualifying claim that you are taking a "meta-level position" is not a particularly convincing argument

It isn't an argument. It's a statement of my position. It isn't tortuous. It's just that you don't understand it. I'm afraid I can't help you. It's clear enough. Serious Catholics aren't nuts. Their position shouldn't just be run roughshod over. Getting Sally's contraceptive pills paid for by Catholic organizations should not be a national policy priority, especially not to the point of running roughshod over the consciences of serious Catholics who (did I say this already?) are not nuts. This is to put it in plain-speaking terms. If you can get "support for the Catholic Church's moral position on contraception" out of that, you're a magician.

I support their position on religious liberty. Everyone should. But the issues are separate. This isn't hard.

I get a little tired of repeating myself. Assertions are not data. Guttmacher did not "do a study." The NSFG asked a gazillion survey questions on many, many topics, and Guttmacher came along and data-mined to see what statistics they could work up that would seem to stick it to the Catholic Church.

I hate to break it to you, but data mining large data sets is a perfectly valid research method. There are right ways and wrong ways to do it, but just because they did data mining, this is in no way evidence that their results are unreliable. The statistics are what they are.

If you didn't want to have to repeat yourself, you could have said from the beginning that you refuse believe the results because Guttmacher is part of some anti-Catholic conspiracy. Or something. If you think they're lying, make that argument explicit.

However, if you attack the results by saying that the authors didn't account for the possibility of Catholics trying to get pregnant at a disproportionate rate (which you did), then you are simply wrong.

More: If 14% of married women are in those situations (pregnant, etc.), then whatever the relative numbers among various religious groups, the absolute percentages currently using contraception must be significantly lower than the totals given that excluded those groups and, of course, strikingly lower than 98%.

Yeah, that's pretty obvious. But since the report does not say that 98% of all Catholic women are currently using contraceptives, regardless of age or pregnancy status, then I don't know what your point is. If people in the media have said this, then they're misreporting the study. That's bad! It's also egregious hairsplitting that has nothing to do with whether Catholics shy away from contraception.

Ooone more time. Assertions are not "results." Just like a report is not a study. All of that gives a specious air of scientific conclusiveness to an unsubstantiated _assertion_.

Guttmacher is undoubtedly a politically biased source. Really, that assertion shouldn't even be controversial. That could have a lot of effects. One could be carelessness and error. Carelessness and error are more likely in the direction of one's bias. For that reason it behooves them, when their statement is challenged, to provide detailed backup for it. This they have not done. Not even yet.

Even if the factoid was true and representative - which it is not - what difference does it make. If 98% of Catholic men have had a lustful thought, does that undercut the idea of fidelity, or marriage, or temperance? Of course not.

Paul J Cella -- Bad analogy on circumcision. Better one would be a case of an employer or government who wanted to exclude coverage of circumcision from his/her employee health insurance plan. What if the city of San Francisco did not try to outlaw circumcision, but just excluded it from city employees health plan (Bans have been enacted in a few foreign countries, and have been viewed as anti-Muslim and or anti-Jewish)? Having foreskin is not an illness or medical condition.

The problem I have with your and Lydia's position is that you are expressly siding with the right of a religious institution -- to limit the personal freedoms of its employees because of Church's passion and religious fervor. By siding with the Catholic Church, you can not skirt the issue of birth control/contraception. This law and administrative ruling -- which is already in force in 28 states, representing about two thirds of our population, provides equal protection to all individuals covered by group health plans. No individual is being compelled to use birth control, just as no one in your example is either preventing or forcing circumcision on someone. If you believe in a woman's right to choose to use contraception, but you are willing to limit that right by allowing the express exclusion of normative access to accepted methods of birth control, all the philosophical wordplay in the world will not alter the real world reality.

No one cares what your problem is. Your inability or unwillingness to properly understand our position precludes us from having any respect for your objections. "Bad analogy on circumcision" is another response that illustrates your misunderstanding. You clearly did not understand the analogy, because you objected to implications from it that were never drawn.

Jeffrey, thank you for the link. An excellent example of what we want to talk about here. It supports the overall theme of this post extremely well: people who report conclusions from data often cannot draw conclusions very reliably. Did you go to the link to the actual questions asked? You should have.

For example, there is a position asked about: All employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception or birth control at no cost. to which 55% of all Americans agree, somewhat or strongly. OK. Notice the "ALL" there, the first word?

But then there are 2 more positions asked about, whether religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals should have to, and whether churches should have to, for which only 49% and 36% agree, respectively.

So, what to do about this data? Any reliable researcher would, if reporting at all in a non-biased manner, would note that they have self-contradictory data that cannot be relied upon, and therefore the study is not useful for drawing conclusions about that. On one reading, no more than 36% think that all employers should be required, on another reading 55% think it. These are irreconcilably opposed. What does the report say? That A majority (55%) of Americans agree that “employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost.” Four-in-ten (40%) disagree with this requirement.

So the report simply ignores the inherent discrepancy of the answers, as if the data was reliable.

A proper survey would have been designed so that if a person answered "Agree" to the "should all employers have to provide" and then answered "disagree" to the question "should churches have to provide", then the questioner should circle back and get a clarification. Did they do that? Nope. Bad methodology.

By the way, all of these studies take self-reported values for what people call themselves: Catholic or whatever else. As has been said above, this is an extremely troublesome way to gather data that is supposed to be reliable. It has the result of putting in as "Catholic" people who were raised going to a Catholic church on Christmas and Easter, have not themselves been to church in 15 years, and could not name 2 distinctly Catholic doctrines without muffing one of them. Reporting on data like this should always be more specific: "among people who call themselves Catholic".

You may also note that the survey method was by phone. This is a common method of surveying, but it unfortunately introduces bias: there are significant groups of people who won't answer a phone survey, and they are NOT equally spread out throughout the population in terms of beliefs and practices.

This administration wants to force a religion to violate the first amendment and then make excuses for it by endless, quoting of surveys, polls, etc trying to pit Catholics against each other and against the church. There are those of us who can see this power-play or divide and conquer.

Since when is the constitution based, on a poll. I thought it was designed to protect religions and people from the tyranny of the majority.

Should the constitution be reduced to how many hits a parish hilton video gets. Should this determine public policy?

If a group of people lie and cheat on their taxes, and the numbers are high, should there be laws passed asking others to do the same.

Everybody knows this is not the case. This is as Lidia says, an attack by the liberal elites on anybody who they think is a threat to their sanctioned morality by disagreeing with it

It is crytal clear that every American that can comprehend that our nation, not to mention the world, is in serious trouble. Specifically our Constitution is under significant attack from Progressive Liberals who's leaders want to destroy the country. While many ignorant Liberals do not see the reality of our situation and would doubt that Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, Muslini's Italy, Franco's France, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Muslim Brotherhood's Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Turkey, etc. are all specific examples of fascist brutal, hateful, murders who will cut the heads off of Christians, Jews and anyone else who will not convert to their version of Islam - radical Islam. Like radical Progressive Liberal who's leaders have said that to transform Americ into a Socialist state they will have to murder 25 million Americans and put millions more in reeducation camps.

Like Charlton Heston, they will take my faith, my Bible and my Gun from my cold dead hand. Of course, I know that God is in control and His plan will be realized, however, He created us in His image and He has equiped us to have free will and I choose freedom, Religious Liberty and God as my master. I will bow to no man. "He who bows to God can stand before anyone".

Will you standup and speak out for Religious Liberty? Will you open your eyes, your mind and your heart to understand the danger that is present in America. Faithful, freedom loving citizens - Patriots are needed who will restore our traditional American values and most especially God in our homes, our churches, our schhols and in our government and marketplace. Please go to STOPHHS.COM and learn more about the recent attack on our Religious Liberty and add you name to the petition. Then encourage ten friends, family members neighbors to do the same. NOW is the time. If not you, who? If not now, when? God bless you. Peace, Peter ~

Paul -- the fact that you don't "care" about my objections to your poor logic and false analogies is your issue. I would think if you care about persuading people who disagree with you to consider your point of view, you would care. Don't respond to me if you can not engage in a direct debate. If your position is that you support women's right to use contraception and birth control, but believe that religious institutions can opt out of our system or laws and regulations when they disagree, go ahead and spell it out. I came to this web site to state my opinion and debate and issue, and mostly what I get back are insults and poorly constructed analogies and evasive denials. I am certain that my viewpoint represents the majority of clear-thinking moderates.

When John Kennedy ran for the presidency back in 1960, he was accused of being too loyal to the Catholic Church, putting it ahead of the U.S. Constitution and government statutes. Now, folks like you and Lydia accuse the current administration and its supporters of failing to adhere to Catholic strictures, and deferring to the will of a non-democratic theocracy.

I thought this was a web site where people can debate rationally, without rancor or ad hominem attacks. In this respect, I acknowledge that you have proven me wrong. You and Lydia, and the handful of others that are in love with you own opinions can have this site back to yourselves.

No, it isn't. I seriously think some people just go to barackobama.com, pick up their talking points, and repeat them all over the web. The states have various opt-out provisions, including the option not to offer prescription drug coverage or to self-insure.

you are willing to limit that right by allowing the express exclusion of normative access to accepted methods of birth control,

Boy, isn't that a convoluted sentence? Yes, I'm willing to _allow_ the _exclusion_ of _paying_ for contraception. Wow, how mean. "Normative"? What in the world does that mean?

By the way, I would have had far less of a problem if the City of San Fran had excluded circumcision from city employees' health care insurance. In fact, no problem at all that I can think of, especially if (unlike in the real world case) the ad campaign for such a proposed exclusion didn't include creepy anti-semites among its chief movers and shakers. Without wanting to start a debate, the health benefits of that minor surgery are debated, so excluding coverage for it could make perfectly legitimate actuarial sense, as it would be treated as an elective decision often made for non-medical reasons.

Now, folks like you and Lydia accuse the current administration and its supporters of failing to adhere to Catholic strictures, and deferring to the will of a non-democratic theocracy.

Watch it, your inner troll is showing.

"Deferring to the will of a non-democratic theocracy"? "Adhering to Catholic strictures"? Oh, you mean not hounding expressly Catholic institutions to force them against their consciences to pay for Sally's birth control pills. You mean leaving them alone instead of going after them and punishing them for not subsidizing contraception. Yeah, that kind of "adherence." Like that. Wow, I guess we lived in a Catholic theocracy until just this past year. Who knew?

Come on. We've spent a _lot_ of time answering you. Rather carefully, actually. I think it's time to bag it, really.

Tony -- I'm glad you checked out the link. As someone who has studied research and statistics at the graduate level, I am aware that people will answer questions in contradictory ways, depending on the phrasing. However, it remains clear from both questions that the majority of Catholics favor a requirement that requires all employer insurance to includes birth control coverage, including church sponsored universities and hospitals.

You may wish to also look at the NY Times CBS News poll that indicates that Catholics support for this issue runs at 57% to 36%:

People who disagree with research results will often attempt to find fault with methodology. I many cases, these criticisms are valid. But the final test of scientifically conducted surveys is whether or not they can be independently replicated. So, Tony, I welcome your contribution to links to research that contradicts these existing studies. Maybe you can give Frank Luntz a call, see what he can come up with.

Mr. Ellis: as it has been stated before, majority does not rule in the Catholic church. It would not matter if 100% of Catholic surveyed were in favor of full coverage of contraceptives/sterilization/abortifacients by employer provided insurance. The Church's teaching still stands. If Catholics (whether in name only, or the devout faithful) take it upon themselves to break the rule, that is between them and God and they will have to answer for their choices. But it STILL does not change the Church's stance. So who cares how many Catholics do or do not agree. The bottom line is that this country was founded by people who wanted to practice their religion freely. The government has no right to tell a church-run organization, regardless of denomination, that they MUST violate their consciences and pay for what is considered sinful.

This would be like asking students in a school how many of them think that cheating on exams should be allowed. Even if 100% of the students agreed that cheating should be allowed, no Principal on Earth would simply tuck their tail and say "you win" and provide cheat sheets for all of the students. The principal, teachers, and school board have a responsibility to uphold the rules, looking out for the students' ultimate well-being. If the majority of students cheat or agreed with cheating, it would not negate the fact that according to the school, it is wrong.

The Catholic church believes it is wrong to use contraception. That's clear. What is not so clear, Mr. Ellis is why you don't seem to understand that regardless of whether you, I, or Lydia agree with the church's teaching, religious liberties are still a right in this country and forcing the Catholic church to go against it's beliefs to please the majority is a violation of that right.

There are two issues here sir: 1.) the teaching on contraception itself...agree or disagree, up to you. And 2.) infringing upon religious freedoms...are you in favor or not? It is possible to disagree with the church AND disagree with the HHS mandate. And all Americans SHOULD disagree with HHS. Because if this is allowed to be forced into action, it is only the beginning. They are testing the waters to see just how much they can get away with and if we as Americans don't stand up and say "back off" to the powers that be, they will just keep on pushing the envelope. If you think that this does not affect you, think again.

As someone who has studied research and statistics at the graduate level, I am aware that people will answer questions in contradictory ways, depending on the phrasing.

Oh, good. So you know that when you get contradictory answers, something is wrong. You don't necessarily know exactly what, until you do further research, but you know your data is unreliable. You know that you have to fix the something wrong before you can say ANYTHING about the results that is reliable.

However, it remains clear from both questions that the majority of Catholics favor a requirement that requires all employer insurance to includes birth control coverage, including church sponsored universities and hospitals.

What part of "unreliable" don't you understand? All we can say that is "clear" is that 52% of the surveyed "Catholics" answered yes to the question, but we don't really know what they think because they are answering the questions incoherently.

But that's all water under the bridge. I am prepared to believe that 52% of so-called Catholics - a majority - think that universities should have to pay for coverage. Are you willing to consider the fact that a poll, i.e. a determination of majority, is not the model we use to determine whether a government requirement constitutes an infringement of religious liberty?

I came to this web site to state my opinion and debate and issue, and mostly what I get back are insults and poorly constructed analogies and evasive denials.

You came to this site with a bunch of prejudices and assumptions, half of which turned out, on instant inspection, to be false. Now you're moaning and groaning because you've been treated a bit roughly after so inauspicious an introduction. Get over it. You stood stubbornly on your own ignorance and got called out for it.

The problem I have with your and Lydia's position is that you are expressly siding with the right of a religious institution -- to limit the personal freedoms of its employees because of Church's passion and religious fervor. By siding with the Catholic Church, you can not skirt the issue of birth control/contraception. This law and administrative ruling -- which is already in force in 28 states, representing about two thirds of our population, provides equal protection to all individuals covered by group health plans. No individual is being compelled to use birth control, just as no one in your example is either preventing or forcing circumcision on someone. If you believe in a woman's right to choose to use contraception, but you are willing to limit that right by allowing the express exclusion of normative access to accepted methods of birth control, all the philosophical wordplay in the world will not alter the real world reality.

I take issue with this statement. For one, noone is limiting personal freedoms by denying coverage on a health plan for BC. They have every right to go out and buy it, with or without coverage. Also, noone is forcing you to work for any organization or company that refuses to offer this coverage. As far as I know, no religious organization is beating down anyones door, carting them off to jail or fining them for the use of birth control. Who ever said you couldn't use BC and force you not to? This isn't about an individuals right to choose, is it?
Speaking of the right to choose, why is it that, when a particular group of people choose not to cover BC out of a concience objection, the people who cry out 'freedom of choice!' are the first denounce this choice?

Mike G, I added italics to make it clear you were quoting Jeffrey above.

To follow on your point: Jeffrey's phrase "express exclusion of normative access to accepted methods of birth control" is the great big glaring LIE of this whole debate.

Until a few years ago, lots and lots of employers didn't cover it, and no state mandated it. Now you want to call employer paid coverage "normative access". Just like THAT? What had been only a few years ago a voluntary feature of some employers becomes "normative"...why? Because lots of liberals don't want to have to pay for it out of their pocket. Now that's a compelling reason to violate the consciences of others.

Just to make this entirely clear: Jeffrey, I don't think you are a liar. I think you unknowingly swallowed the false bait of the movement. But I think that the leaders of this movement, especially at the top of the administration, know perfectly well that there is no basis for thinking of employer-paid coverage for contraceptives is any sort of normative access for them.

It appalls me to see this happen. Liberals rag on conservatives for wanting to preserve customs (usually, good, wholesome, worthwhile, highly integrated customs) because those customs stand in the way of some (usually minority) group's new libertine behavior. They laugh off the whole idea of custom, of tradition, having a bearing on what we ought to do today. But along comes some almost-brand-new practice that they have conned a bare majority into accepting in the last few years, and all of a sudden they LIKE arguments based on "normative" standards, i.e. based on "what people have been doing, and so expect to do". This is Orwellian, or rather Satanic, since he is the father of lies. It is almost too putrid to even speak about without gagging on it.

Mike G is absolutely right. There is something deeply disrespectful in employees procuring the coercive power of the state in order to force their employers to help furnish them with pills and devices whose acquisition the employer believes he is morally obligated not to materially cooperate.

In October I was speaking at BYU. I had neglected to drink my usual two cups of coffee in the morning. On my to campus I thought I would just buy some campus. Dumb me. I had forgotten about the Mormon view on "stimulating" beverages. I gave the lecture, relying on will power and adrenaline to get me through. Afterwards, I took two ibuprofens for the staggering headache I had acquired. It never crossed my mind to ask my host get me a cup of coffee. Why? Even though I reject the LDS view on coffee, and actually believe its a little strange, I did not want to offend or disrespect my host, putting him in an awkward position.

The fact the LDS church does not serve coffee at BYU, and forbids its presence and its consumption on campus, does not violate my rights. The LDS church is not interfering with my "personal choices." On the other hand, if I had demanded that the BYU faculty provide me with 3 Vente Cappuccinos as a condition of my speaking there, it would have shown deep disrespect of my Mormon hosts. In fact, I would have embarrassed me to have even asked.

It seems to me that any employee who demands that his religious employer materially cooperate with the acquisition of a product that the employer is morally obligated not to materially cooperate is intolerant and disrespectful. The idea that anyone would think that such a request is even remotely permissible in civil society shows how deeply the culture of narcissism has infected our public life.

Wow. Coming late to the party, I can't join in on all the fun folks are having with Mr. Ellis (question: is he for real or can someone who really studied "research and statistics at the graduate level" have such faulty reasoning skills?)

However, concerning Mr. Peter Alexander, I will note for the record that General Franco was the leader of Spain and was NOT a fascist. I tend to side with those who think his rule, on the whole, was good for Spain; but since the subject is very OT, I'll just note that the merits of his rule remain controversial to this day.

For Planned Parenthood to crow about the high percentage of fertility aged Catholic women on contraception is like a crew of firefighters to turn a water cannon on a crowd and say, "But look, most of them are wet!". Teen-aged women are force fed contraceptives at every turn, by every institution and for any reason. Menstrual cramps? Contraception! Acne? Contraception! Wondering about sex? Contraception! Never mind the breast cancer/cervical cancer/blood clot/depression/infertility links. Contraception! Never mind the abortifacient aspect of many of these drugs. Contraception!

Liberals have abandoned abortion as a wedge issue - they've lost that fight on the merits - and so now they are going to try to use contraception as an election year wedge issue. So Catholics - and other conscientious folks - who refuse to swallow the swamp water are the scapegoats! And, if they dare to object we can easily put them in their place; just rehash the last 40 years of sex scandals!

I don't understand why this is such a big issue right now. Why not just leave things alone?

More importantly, though, would I expect my insurance company to provide me with free condoms? Free spermicide? If someone wants to use the pill, it's on their head, but take the whole thing for what it's worth: it's a contraceptive. Why should your insurance company have to provide you with free contraception tools? A little common sense would go a long way here.

1. As a statistician, I get upset when people say this. You CANNOT lie with statistics, "lying with statistics" is just LYING aka dishonest AKA lying by omission. Statistics itself, like guns and cars, is neutral.
2. Regarding your update 1:

Upon reflection, I have realized clearly an additional major problem with the 98% statistic. It is including all the Catholic women who expressly told researchers that they used "no method" to avoid pregnancy. In the table, that is 11%.

What the Guttmacher report says is:

Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women. (...) On average, 11% of women at risk for unintended pregnancy are not using contraceptives, and levels of nonuse do not differ by religious affiliations, frequency of attendance or importance of religion.

So the 11% is not included in the 98%. To be clear, that 98% is 98% of the 89% that remains when one subtracts the 11% that could get pregnant, but never had sex.

Away from statistics, and back to a larger issue, I just wonder what your point is?
Is your point that Catholic women are more devout than Gutmacher says?

I guess the point that Gutmacher and HHS are making, is that since Catholics are not so devout as the Bishops order them to be - sexually active Catholic women (and men, let's not forget) virtually all use contraceptives, - then spreading the cost that around via their measures, is justified.

3a. A lot of opponents claim that this is all "free" for those women.
It's not free, it's COVERED without CO-PAY, meaning that everyone in a particular group (a company) is spreading the cost of contraceptives around.

3b. Why get so upset on behalf of employers you aren't sharing health insurance with? If it's selflessness, why be selfless on behalf of the employers and not on behalf of the employees? Who are after all the weaker party in this equation. Jesus also choose to protect the weakest members of society, not the rich.

4. I suppose you don't agree with Limbaughs choice of words, and method, calling some girl a slut for 3 days straight, but do you agree with his point, that people are having MORE sex because their contraceptives are included in their normal health insurance spendings?

5. Are you with an insurance company that complies with this? If not, why get so upset with it?

6. Insurance companies are saving money via this law (they are after all, in the business of risk reduction), why are you still upset with this? if you think it doesn't save them money, do you have proof of that? Just cos a law forces people to do something, doesn't mean it costs them money. Most of the time laws SAVE people money.

Stella, I'm not going to waste my time answering all your questions, many of which are clearly not seriously posed but just trolling.

As a matter of fact, the entire statistics issue has moved on, as you can find in other posts of mine. Approximately 60% of Catholic women within the ages of 15-44 appear to be using non-NFP contraception, which is not a very impressive number. The 98% "have used" number has actually been confirmed, but it's a pretty trivial number, when you consider that this could refer to one time in their lives. Yes, I do think that in general Guttmacher and co. are trying to be sensationalist and imply that Catholic women are less devout statistically and have an extremely high "use for" contraception. By the way, Nancy Pelosi said that 98% "are using" contraception, so that misunderstanding has definitely been out there.

I care about this as a religious liberty issue, which it is. The government is behaving like a maniacal tyrant. I'm not Catholic, by the way. I'm also not a Quaker but would object to forcing Quaker employers to buy gun club memberships for their employees. This administration is out of control.

The thing about "saving insurance companies money" is such an absurd talking point that showed up ex nihilo and is now passed around from the left as gospel that I don't really think I can bear to answer it for the umpteenth time, which I have done on these threads again and again and again. Hint: If average family size grew, insurance companies could charge more for family premiums. Hint #2: Insurance companies aren't dumb about trying to make money, and they did not pay for contraception, or sometimes cover it at all, until gradually throughout the 90's state laws started forcing them to. You have to assume that they knew nothing about their own actuarial best interests to buy this made-up talking point. It's only because health coverage is being thought of as a pure handout rather than as a business interaction between the insurance company and the insured that, in a way that is short-sighted anyway, people per se are being treated as merely an expense rather than a resource, and having fewer of them as a "money savings."

LOL. You're made because they correctly defined their sample group? I suppose only 40% of Catholics use birth control, because we should count sterile women, post-menopausal women, pregnant women, and men while we're at it!

Way to use lies and bad statistics to invoke a statistical prerogative about false statistics. You're more wrong than they are, frankly. You question the presentation of the data, and you would prefer a flawed methodology??? FOOL! BUFFOON!

Post a comment

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If
your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same
comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.